


If Adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.

by tobinlaughing



Series: The Schemes and Machinations of Both War, and A Young Gentlewoman [2]
Category: Temeraire - Fandom
Genre: Alternate History, Captain elizabeth st. Germaine, Coming of Age, Dragons, Emily roland - Freeform, Found Family, Gen, His majesty's aerial corps, Naomi Novik, Napoleonic Wars, Runaway, Spies, Temeraire - Freeform, William laurence (frequent mention), girls with dragons, jane roland - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25933957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobinlaughing/pseuds/tobinlaughing
Summary: The continuing adventures of Will Laurence's niece Helena, after she runs away from home to join the British Aerial Corps.
Series: The Schemes and Machinations of Both War, and A Young Gentlewoman [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1929334
Comments: 35
Kudos: 39





	1. Prologue

Without baggage or harness of her own, Helena had found herself presented to Captain St Germain's ground-crew master, a reedy man named Wallace. He'd eyed her critically, a rooster wary of any change to his flock, then briskly shouldered off his own green coat to wrap around the girl, who hadn't noticed her own shivers, either from cold or nerves. 

"Greeleigh!" He bawled, and almost at the instant a cadet appeared at his side, breath steaming. "Loan us your spare trews, eh? This 'un is like to freeze ere we touch down again." The cadet--Greeleigh--was gone less than a minute and back, carrying a leather harness looped about one shoulder and a spare pair of breeches, evidently her--her? Yes, her--own. Helena stumbled, wobbling on one foot to work the breeches over her short pantaloons, and both Wallace and Greeleigh helped her to cinch into the flying harness: the whole over borrowed pants and coat both, straps that looped 'round both waist and chest, over both shoulders and under both legs. Fat metal rings dangled at her hipbones and shoulders, jingling as Wallace pecked over her with a practiced eye and efficient hands, adjusting here and there until the whole unwieldy-feeling equipage passed his expert assessment.

Wallace and Greeleigh steered her to the line of crew who were scrambling aboard, and Helena balked for the first time at the prospect of going aboard: the heavy steel bars used as hand-and-footholds, riveted to the harness, lay scant inches from the dragon's s living hide. She reached a trembling hand up to touch, for the very first time, the overlapping scales, hard and smooth as pebbled glass, and in the low orange firefight shining soft and pale, their true color indistinct. 

Strong hands grasped her waist and lifted before her fingers could land, and at her ear Wallace ordered, "Hands on the bar, miss, and feet too; no fear, and up he climb," evidently having thought Helena's hesitation due to her lack of height, or perhaps choosing that reason deliberately, and ignoring her very real ignorance and awe. Greeleigh was ahead of her, climbing easily, and so Helena grasped cold metal and thick leather, the bars pressing through the thin soles of her slippers, and pulled herself up. Her arms were shaking by the time Greeleigh led her to a position along the dragon's side, and the cadet had to lock the heavy rings into place for her, Helena's own fingers too stiff with cold and exertion to be of much use.

There had been bustling movement and industry all along and around, shouting and orders and men. Now Mortiferous shifted, the entire apparatus of his harness and crew thumping to the side as he transferred his weight around and rose to all fours, and a great hissing of rope as the belly-netting was drawn up; then more shouting, a woman's voice clear over all--the Captain?--and a rumble that traveled the length of the dragon's hide as Mortiferous drew in a great breath. Braced and bundled as she was, Helena could not suppress the shocked whoop that escaped her as Mortiferous surged into the night, his great wings snapping out and sweeping down with a tremendous billowing disturbance of air. 

The wind rushing already past her back and shoulders was icy and damp, but the hide before her gave off its own gentle heat that she would be foolish to ignore. Gently, Helena spread one already-sore hand and pressed her creaking fingers against the smooth scales and breathed in the copper-dry smell of dragon-hide, and wondered in the dark if it was too late to consider what in the world she had done.


	2. Chapter 1

The operating theater could have held ten or more additional students past the eighteen who stood, shuffling their feet and papers nervously, around a wide wooden table. The table itself held only one occupant, and this did not shuffle or glance around at the others in the room: the dragonet on the table was laid out, malformed wings spread wide, stunted tail hanging crookedly from the edge of the table-top, and quite dead. 

The great doors at the end of the operating theater swung open, admitting Dr Keynes and his two assistants and causing the pool of students already present to part as the Red Sea before him. For his part, Keynes scowled; not at anyone in particular, but in general and from long-established habit; he neither particularly disliked nor really cared for teaching, but realizing that he himself was a mortal man and thus bound by the laws of nature to exist only in one place at a time, Keynes had agreed to at least participate in the education of those who might ease his load of patients before that very load drove him to apoplexy and uselessness. Without introduction or preamble, Keynes began his lecture, pacing slowly ‘round the table in the moat of empty space left by his courteous--or more likely, squeamish--students. 

“On this morning we have another regrettable result of the hectic and unregulated breeding programme that was implemented at the height of the dragon plague,” Keynes rapped out, and allowed himself a small curl of satisfaction to see pens beginning to scratch on sheafs of paper, recording his words. “As we are all aware, the usual careful selection of sires and dams within each of Britain’s major breeds was suspended in the ninth month of the plague, in favor of encouraging the beasts who had not yet fallen too gravely ill to produce eggs enough to continue His Majesty’s Aerial Corps in the event of a catastrophic failure of health in the established forces already in service. To this end, every dragon who was still able to make the attempt at mating was requested to do so, and with every other dragon of the appropriate sex that was available. 

“We have already seen examples of the results of this will-you, nill-you approach to breeding, both of the best variety and the worst; as to the former, recall our class period from two weeks ago regarding the normal and careful procedures with which cross-breeding is attempted here and elsewhere on the Continent. While the development of breeds like the Longwing and the Regal Copper can be held up as great successes for Britain, understand that such results are the effort of decades, if not full centuries even given a dragon’s relative rapid maturation towards the ability to sire and produce eggs. Still, the almost accidental crossing of the Yellow Reaper with the Winchester has produced for us several likely hatchlings and eggs that bid fair to fill out our ranks between the courier-weight and middle-weight breeds. The eggs hardening in the baths here seem uniform and healthy, and the three dragonets already hatched are promising, even if their final growth is yet to be seen. 

“Here, however,” Keynes stopped pacing, giving his full face to the form on the table, “is an example of the latter. This egg was hatched of the Anglewing Celestia and sired by the Bright Copper Laudibilis. Again, the strongest shared trait between the parent dragons is size and weight classification. I propose to demonstrate, using the procedures and tools of necropsy, that the cross-breeding of the Anglewing breed to the Bright Copper breed is patently inadvisable; my hypothesis is that this dragonet perished of malformation, not only of the tail and wings, but also of vital internal organs and perhaps even of the brain.”

With that, Keynes began his physical examination of the dragonet, pointing out traits that could be easily identified as coming from either the Anglewing parent or the Bright Copper; minding, too, the poor formation evident in various areas of the body and lecturing his students on their probable cause and effect on the dragonet’s short development. The poor shape of the wings, he surmised, was due to the conflict between the parent dragons’ breeds: Bright Coppers hatched from small, fast-hardening eggs, while Anglewings developed in the shell more slowly, the larger egg hardening without haste so as to accommodate the shape and size of the distinctive wing bones and spines; without the forgiving elasticity of an unhardened shell, Keynes mused, the dragonet’s wings had been stunted and had grown unevenly; even had it survived more than an hour outside the shell upon finally hatching, the dragon would have never known flight. 

The students had gradually crowded closer during the cursory visual examination, jostling each other for the better views as Doctor Keynes pointed out this or that oddity, or stretched or manipulated a wing or claw to show the unusual degree of stiffness or flexibilty of the appendage. At the close of his visual inspection, Keynes nodded to one of his assistants, who produced a canvas roll, tied with cording and misshapen along its length and breadth with the shapes of the tools it contained. Still lecturing, Keynes untied the cording and carefully unrolled the canvas, gesturing for his assistants to turn up the wicks of the room’s lamps and to move the reflecting mirrors into better positions. He donned a many-pocketed leather apron and selected his first tool. 

“I shall make the primary incision along the keel-bone,” he announced, holding in one hand a scalpel the size of a butcher’s knife, honed to a shining blue edge and reflecting the increased light back into the eyes of the students. Some several of the young men at the table stepped backwards, with varying degrees of grace; more than one head bobbled with the effort of not treading on his neighbor’s toes, lest he shoved back into the ring of reflected light and closer to the actual operation. 

“Our examination will begin in the chest cavity, and we will inspect the air-sacs, the lungs and heart, as well as the major flight muscles and the dragon’s digestive system. This will include examination of both the stomach and bowels, although this dragonet did not live long enough to partake of its first meal.” 

Another outbreak of shuffling and pushing backwards and the moat of space around the table reappeared. Keynes frowned, standing and peering at the students, anonymous in the dimmer light around the operating table; the bright overhead lamp that hung from the operating theater’s high ceiling glowed brightly, throwing the unhappy planes of Keynes’ face in to sharper, more intimidating relief.

“This will not do, gentlemen,” the surgeon rapped out. “I will not mollycoddle you, nor will I tolerate squeamishness nor the faint-hearted in my surgery. You will look fondly back on your time in a well-lit operating theater, and the leisurely course of necropsies like this one, when there are bombs falling all around you and your charge is bleeding into the mud of some god-forsaken midnight battlefield! Now! Chins up, eyes forward, and there should not be a man among you who shrinks from this examination!”

One or two of the boys shuffled forward, and there was an extraordinary chorus of muffled coughs and grumbling before a slender figure, shorter than the others, stepped into the ring of light around the examination table. Others joined him, hesitantly, and Keynes, mollified only somewhat, bent back to the form on the table. Before he placed the scalpel’s edge at the tip of the protruding keel-bone, he eyed the creeping circle of students once more. “Do not be misled,” he cautioned, “even at this early stage, the dragon’s hide is quite thick and tough. Courage you will need in spades, but a good strong arm and back will serve you well, too.”

Three long hours later, Keynes was alone in the operating theater with his subject, setting the final post-necropsy stitches at the place where he’d begun his incision, the top of the keel-bone. With a sigh he tied off the waxed thread in an inelegant knot and wiped his hands again on an already-bloody towel from his apron. He reached for the bell-pull to one side of the operating table, intending to summon one of his assistants from the washroom to begin the exacting process of cleaning and sanitizing the room once more. The slight form standing in the corner startled him into a blue streak of cursing.

“God’s Balls, boy, what the devil do you think you’re doing?” the surgeon demanded, hands on hips, heedless of his bloodstained and soggy apron. “Lurking in corners like that!”

The boy--no, Keynes saw, this was not one of the boys; instead, when the slim figure stepped into the circle of light ‘round the examination table, the light revealed a decidedly feminine heart-shaped face with an upturned nose, wide blue eyes, and wheaten hair bound back in a practical plait. She clutched a sheaf of notebooks and loose papers to her chest, clad in the same breeches, shirt and vest that her male classmates wore; unlike other girls of her age, which Keynes’ practiced eye put at eleven or twelve years, she did not wear the bottle-green coat of a confirmed cadet. 

“I do beg your pardon, Doctor Keynes, I did not intend to startle you so,” she said crisply, bowing slightly as though from reflex or ingrained habit. “I did not have a good view of the operating table while you were discussing the unevenness of the dragonet’s air-sacs, and was wondering if you might correct my notes, so that I have the dimensions writ correctly?” 

There was something passing familiar about her speech-- a refinement that Keynes did not often hear coming from the common-bred sons and daughters of aviators who populated the coverts. Keynes’ gaze sharpened on her face, and the proffered sketches and notes: ah, so she was that one, the foundling Captain St. Germain had somehow scooped up during the Corps’ flight across England to Scotland after the disastrous Battle of London. That explained the lack of coat: by the age of eleven or twelve most girls at the coverts had been a-dragonback scores of times and were deep into officer training, intended almost without variation to be Captains to England's Longwings. This girl, however, had been at Loch Laggan for a scant five weeks, and five weeks was not near long enough to get her caught up with the five years of training she hadn't yet had. 

Keynes scowled over her sketches, impressed despite himself at the steadiness of her hand in the face of the gruesome details of the dragonet's malformation. He corrected one or two lines and notes, but in the main, the girl's notes were acceptable. 

“Thank you, Doctor Keynes,” she said at last, stowing the notes carefully and giving another bobbing bow. Keynes squinted at her thoughtfully; the movement of her blonde plait put him in mind of someone, although he couldn't quite recall whom. 

“Of course. And your name, cadet?” Though he never had female cadets in his classes of her age, her gender forced the automatic address. She started a bit at the inadvertent ranking, but composed herself quickly.

“Allen, Doctor Keynes. Helena Allen,” she said. 

“Very good, Allen. Awa’ with you then,” Keynes shooed her off, then at last recalled and found the bell-pull, summoning his assistants from the washroom, where they had been lounging after cleaning his surgical instruments, to begin restoring the surgery and to dispose of the poor, dissected dragonet.

\---

She had only just shelved her notebook and notes, and sat to remove her sturdy boots, when the other girls came in from their own morning lessons. The dormitory was suddenly awash in bottle-green coats and battered field boots and a-jingle with the noise of harness-rings and buckles as the other girls--cadets, all, and all within two years of her own age--swarmed in to dispose of flying scarves, goggles and gloves. Helena quietly rebuckled her boots, hoping for the thousandth time that her lack of harness and clanking carabiners would allow her to slip from the room without notice. Alas, the chatter in the room stilled briefly just as she made the door.

“Allen!” One of the girls shouted, and Helena turned, composing herself stiffly and willing her face to the mask of pleasantness that she had been cultivating these last long weeks. 

“Hello, Greeleigh,” she answered pleasantly enough, though her insides churned with dread as the older girl approached. Greeleigh shouldered her way through the milling crowd of girls to where Helena waited, her aborted escape as yet so close. 

“Have you heard yet?” Greeleigh demanded in her broad northern accent, so close to a true brogue. “Has there yet been word?”

“No,” Helena answered, and the disappointment she fought to keep from her own main showed clearly on Greeleigh's face. Other girls--Hadley, MacKenzie, Broadkirk--crowded in close to Greeleigh, in various attitudes of curiosity. They seemed to deflate a bit in unison as Helena continued. “I was in the surgery with Keynes all morning; I daresay the commanders could have found me easily enough, had the decision been made.”

“They'll release you for duty soon,” Greeleigh said, taking Helena's elbow in a friendly gesture. “There's no earthly reason to keep you grounded like this.”

“You'll never make Captain before you're five-and-twenty if the Admiral don't get you in your greens soon,” Broadkirk put in earnestly, though not unkindly. The others nodded, plainly awed at the terrible prospect of being without their own dragons (still theoretical, of course; the Longwings hardening in their shells in the hot bathhouses below Loch Laggan's main courtyard were still unformed in the shell, and Longwings were years in the shell before hatching) at such an advanced, decrepit age. 

While all cadets and officers received some manner of schooling from their superiors while in service--a service, Helena was daily reminded, to which most of them had been born and in which many had been engaged for nearly two years--the retreat from London had brought so many dragon crews to Laggan that regular school hours had been instituted for anyone below the rank of ensign, or in Helena's own case, still of school-room age. There was real danger to sending formations out from Scotland: though widely-spaced, visible patrols might always be seen as provocation and draw Bonaparte's forces north. And so the dragons crowded the heated courtyard, eating up the herds; the commanders daily shouted behind closed doors over narrow odds for success, and Helena learned anatomy, physiognomy, mathematics and tactics from rotating ranks of lieutenants and captains, pressed into schoolroom service by too many idle hours and the fear of leaving their cadets unprepared for anything. 

“Have you had dinner yet?” Greeleigh asked, shaking the gloom of future contemplation off and smiling brightly. “We can catch you up on course-plotting and you can tell us what went on in surgery today.”

Helena smiled but felt her belly sink at the prospect: surrounded by chattering cadets in their officer's training, the gory details of the necropsy would be pushed aside by the more comfortable and familiar discussion of the other girls’ shared lessons and experiences. And while she did not necessarily relish _her_ morning’s lessons, she had much rather not be left out of the conversation, as she naturally would be--omission born not of malice or ill-feeling or ill-thought towards her, but of the natural instinct to cling to the familiar, felt just as keenly by the other girls in the dormitory as herself.

A sharp rapping at the doorjamb forestalled any reply she must needs make: the cadets around her sprang to attention, each girl’s backbone snapping ramrod-straight without conscious thought, wherever she stood. Helena herself imitated the other girls with barely a moment’s thought: the response was quickly becoming ingrained, though not quite as deeply yet as the others’. 

In the hall just outside the main door to the dormitory stood the impressive figure of Captain St. Germain: tall, broad-shouldered and -hipped, and just now rather resplendent in a freshly-pressed bottle-green coat and neckcloth, her tall Hessian boots a-gleam with new polish. She looked, to Helena’s eye, the very epitome of a fighting dragon-captain, more splendid even than….well, than anyone else Helena had ever seen. 

The Captain surveyed the uneven cluster of girls standing at stiff attention with a practiced eye, one eyebrow twitching upward in interest, amusement, or censure, Helena couldn’t be sure. When the Captain’s gaze fell on the clump of five girls in which Helena stood, her eyes narrowed in satisfaction. 

“Miss Allen,” the Captain said, and Helena’s heart fluttered, dismay (at being singled out) and hope (at the Captain’s possible news) warring for precedence in her breast. “With me, if you please.” The Captain turned sharply on her heel and Helena pushed with scant apology through the small crowd of girls around her, hurrying after. 

:::::

Admiral Roland, in contrast to her subordinate, wore her green coat open at the front, neckcloth untied and hanging at her throat as though she had forgotten to finish tying it. There was the faint stain, as though of spilt coffee, at the breast of her shirt, and her breeches and boots bore the marks of hard wear and the dampness of the high atmosphere in which her dragon must have most recently been travelling. Her leather flying-coat and goggles were tossed carelessly over one of her office’s chairs, and her gloves were tucked into the harness she still wore about her waist. Captain St Germain saluted crisply upon entering the Admiral’s office; Helena wobbled, torn between her long-trained instinct to curtsy, the motion of bowing--to which she had tried to adapt herself since coming to Kinloch Laggan--, and saluting, a motion she was not required to perform, as she was not yet recognized as a cadet. In the end, after a moment’s unsteadiness, she bowed with a good approximation of her usual exactitude, and stood to the side of the door with Captain St Germain, waiting for the Admiral to notice their arrival. 

The Admiral scrawled a signature on a large sheet of paper and handed it to her aide, then repeated the action with the next two sheets on her desk. To the third she also added a drop of red wax from a stick already melted over a candle, and pressed into this the signet ring she wore on her right index finger. The aide whisked all three parchements smoothly away, folding them easily, and stepping from the room. Only then did the Admiral look up. 

“Ah, Beth,” she said, and immediately began to dig through a second pile of papers on the corner of the desk: envelopes and small sheets, correspondence, most likely. She made a small noise of satisfaction when she found the right one, and pulled it from the pile, scanning the first few lines. 

“Captain,” she said, much more severely now, her scarred face drawn into a serious expression, “do me the favor of reminding me where and when you picked up the young foundling here. Allen, correct?” 

Admiral Roland’s eyes were direct and hard, and Helena swallowed nervously. The scar that slashed down the left side of the Admiral’s face gave her the fierce look that Helena might have imagined on the face of a pirate or a mercenary, and made Helena’s belly flutter with nerves. “Aye, Admiral. That is--yes. Admiral. Sir.”

“We already had an Allen,” the Admiral commented, and Captain St Germain, to Helena’s right, made a small noise, of which nature Helena couldn’t guess. 

“Helena Allen came aboard Mortiferus with me during the retreat North, across Britain, at the outset of the invasion,” St Germain replied. “We’d stopped for rest in Nottinghamshire and she...well, Admiral, she found us, I suppose. I did’na see where she came from, only that she asked to join there on the hillside, in her nightclothes, I believe.”

“Ah, yes, Nottinghamshire. Wollaton Hall, correct?”

Helena felt sweat begin to trickle down the back of her neck.

“Aye, mum. Captain--I mean, Laurence’s family estate, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed.” The Admiral’s eyes hadn’t left Helena’s face, and the girl wasn’t sure she’d blinked at all. Moisture was creeping treacherously down her spine now, and she fought to contain a shiver. 

“Miss Allen. Or should I say, Allendale, hmm? Of Nottinghamshire' s Wollaton Hall? Which relation would make you, naturally, _Lady_ Helena Laurence.”

Helena could no longer sustain the Admiral’s gaze, and dropped her eyes to the floor, feeling the flush of shame or embarrassment or relief flood upwards across her face. A tickle in her nose warned of the tears that threatened her composure, and she fought to take deep, even breaths.

The letter in the Admiral’s hand rattled as she shook it slightly. “I have had a quite pleasant letter from the current Lady Allendale, you know, and she asks if perhaps I have knowledge of her grand-daughter. A clever girl, she writes; quite taken with the idea of her uncle, the dragon-captain, and of the Aerial Corps in general. A scandal to her family, this interest, but a girl’s curiosity can’t be helped. It seems Lady Allendale’s son and daughter-in-law are convinced that their offspring might have been taken by roving bands of French marauders, as she disappeared some four or five weeks ago now, at the outset of the invasion.”

The weight of the Admiral's gaze, hard and heavy, and the hot, astonished stare of Captain St. Germain, made Helena wish heartily that at that moment the ground would crack open and swallow her whole.

At her silence, white-hot in the tent, the Admiral spun on her bootheel and strode back to her desk.

“This family,” Admiral Roland muttered, “is sent to be the death of me, I am sure.”

Helena did not know what to say and was pathetically grateful when Captain St Germain spoke instead. “Your orders, Admiral?”

Admiral Roland tugged a hand through the granite-shot crop of her hair, and sighed. “I cannot very well recall Laurence now, as he is outside orders on some scrub-duty what Wellesley has for him. And anyway, what the haymill might make of me handing a young girl off to her felonious uncle at a time like this….i'd be brought up before the Admiralty and the society papers too. But I have no shortage of eggs at Laggan that will need girls to captain them in the next years and can't in conscience turn you away. Beth,” she said, abruptly, looking up to the Captain still standing at the door, “I will have orders for you this evening before I am off. I will send Miss Allen off to dinner in a moment.”

Captain St German snapped a smart salute to her Admiral, and Helena's wretched state did not allow her to see the wry wink and tight smile the two Longwing captains exchanged over her head. She left, and once the tent-flap had swished shut, Admiral Roland rose again from her desk and leaned against it with one hip. 

“I will write to your grandmother as only I ought,” the Admiral decided finally, “and at least set her to rest that you aren't dead or at some other worse fate in a French camp. And I meant it, about the eggs; a girl who runs away to join the Corps will make something of a Captain anyways. But your family has the means to make things difficult for us if they dislike your choice, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to face a suit for kidnapping. I will, for the moment, authorise you as a Cadet and set you in classes and to duty with the other twelve-year-olds. God willing, we won't have ruin rained down on our heads for it. Your uncle--” And here the Admiral stopped abruptly, color peppering her cheek and forehead. 

Helena had heard no shortage of gossip amongst the other girls concerning her uncle's actions: stealing the cure to the dragon Plague away to France, of all places--a mix of scorn and gilded romantic admiration. Of course she could not inquire too closely as to Uncle Will's situation, but the imagination of ten- and twelve-year-old girls had filled in any lack of true knowledge with suppositions, guesses both factual and half-wild, and sighing embroideries that she might imagine her uncle as some handsome, half-mad pirate and his dragon a willing aerial buccaneer. 

She herself did not know how to feel about the treachery: having only seen him ever at a distance and the author of her own daydreams on the subject of dragon husbandry, and not raised to the realities of life in the Corps as the other girls had been, the conflicting opinions and theories surrounding the action only confused her own emotions. She could not find fault in the general idea of saving the dragons of the Continent, even if many if them _were_ French; at the same time, even as uneducated as she was in the ways of warfare, Helena could not ignore the advantage the action might have given Britain. And so she did not correct anyone in addressing her as Miss Allen, rather than Miss Laurence: the circumstance of her joining the Corps, and the coincidence of her name, would not bear up to any examination at all.

The Admiral scratched a few lines on a bit of paper and signed it with a hard flourish before handing it off to Helena. “Take that to the quartermaster and then the instructors. Daly, I think, is the current head of instruction?” When Helena nodded, the Admiral continued, “then take it to Daly and the quartermasters and get yourself a proper coat and harness. I daresay you'll be aloft before the end of the week.”

Helena bowed with a wobble, missing another of the Admiral's tight smiles. “And after all this headache, I don't want to hear of you for a good six-month, Miss Allen, do you understand?”

“Aye, Admiral,” Helena answered, feeling as though the two words had to be forced out around around a queer bubble of tangled emotion under her breastbone.

“Off with you, then, and to dinner,” the Admiral said by way of dismissal, and in no few moments Helena found herself outside the tent, which was even now being broken down in anticipation of the Admiral's imminent departure.


	3. Chapter 3

Her grip inside the leather glove slipped and Helena’s hand lost the hold on the rocky outcropping. She gasped, not having time to scream before the rope attached to her harness-belt was jerked straight; only her feet, braced in leather slippers against the cliff face, prevented her from flipping end-over-end and hanging upside-down. All the same, she scrambled for the rope and kicked wildly, hugging the line that secured her to the rock wall and trying her very hardest not to panic. 

“Chin up, Allen,” Greeleigh said from somewhere above, and Helena squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to resume her self-control. 

“Hands on the wall, Allen, and just breathe,” another voice came from much higher over head, and Helena cracked one eye open at the sound of Daly’s bored admonishment. The training master was stationed two-thirds of the way up the cliff face, anchored there with fixed ropes attached to spikes driven into the rock, to observe the cadets’ exercise. Helena mastered the morbid desire to look down but could not help but see the other students, younger than she and her own age, steadily swarming up the cliff with the ease of long practice. 

“Right yourself, Allen, and resume climbing,” Daly instructed, and Helena could not miss the note of annoyance in his voice. The first week of training, the old Captain had been patient, more than sensible of the five years his newest charge hadn’t been under harness with the rest of his students; ten days in, however, his frustration at Helena’s lack of prodigious progress was becoming more and more evident. 

She willed her right hand to open away from the rope. It would not answer. 

“Do you require _assistance_ , Allen?” Captain Daly asked loudly. On the floor of the old quarry, the Captain’s old Reaper Jaculum stirred, ready to reach up to steady or catch an ungraceful cadet; a dreadful fate for anyone who had ever climbed the wall before and open invitation for the calumny and scorn of her peers. Helena finally forced her hand open, feeling the joints and knuckles creak with strain, and placed her palm against the rock. Her toes found their holds again, and she cautiously applied her weight to her legs and knees, pulling herself forward to the cliff-face and off the support of her harness. 

“Allen. _Hist_ , Allen!” Greeleigh was still a little above her, and Helena looked up in surprise. The younger girl gave her a conspiratorial grin, made rakish by the front tooth still growing in on the bottom. “Remember yesterday, in jom’metry? What was that limerick old Ashby gave us about primes, hm?”

The ruse was patently transparent, but Helena was grateful all the same: breathing deeply, she settled both hands into their holds and tried to recall the clumsy lyric. 

“A prime...is a number...alone,” she recited slowly, and moved her right hand up to resume the hold from which she’d fallen, “No divisor but ….one, and its… _own_ ” and she pushed off with her legs, striving for another outcropping with her left hand. For a moment she was dangling again, but managed to hitch her knees high enough to set her toes in the crevices her fingers had just vacated. Pulling with arms and shoulders, pushing with her shaking legs, Helena managed to stand more or less straight in her new position, and heard Jaculum give a grunt of satisfaction below her: he would not have to give up his sun-warmed spot on the stone after all. 

“What comes next?” Greeleigh asked, her own voice strained as she moved on to her next hand-and-footholds higher up the wall. Helena pulled in another deep breath, trying to sight the next handhold. 

“Oft times come in _pairs_ …” a small jump, and a squeak, as she caught the outcropping, “...and will multiply fair…” and she reset her feet, and pushed up, “and are purer...even... _than..gold_!” She panted, setting her feet securely. No other cadets were below her now, but she was closer to halfway up the wall than she had been: easier, now, to go up than down. Greeleigh continued her own ascent, sure in the path she’d climbed scores of times and more in her own training. Helena blew out a brief sigh, and spotted the next handhold. 

“A prime is a number alone…”

Greeleigh and Broadkirk clapped her on the back and a few other cadets applauded when Helena finally hauled herself over the cliff’s edge, but most of the other dozen students simply rolled their eyes or grumbled at her slowness. Already beet-red from exertion, Helena’s flush of embarrassment was hidden, but she still avoided the gazes of her classmates as she trotted over to the group that waited for Captain Daly’s further instruction. She tried to breathe deeply and quietly as the instructor began issuing orders. 

“As you all well know, the bulk of your education happens a-dragonback once you’re assigned to a crew! Those are you with assignments already must stay in condition for when duties resume, an ne'er the rest doubt that you'll be called up soon as well! God willing and wi’ any luck, you’ll move through the ranks as your captain sees fit, and you’ll perform any number of duties while under harness! Today you’ll practice shifting load under harness, and you’ll do so while descending again to the floor of the quarry!”

Stifled groans met this pronouncement, but were not silenced by the swift retribution of the schoolmasters and governesses that Helena had known prior to joining the Corps--rulers across knuckles, for example, or at the very least sharp words and cutting insults. Instead, Captain Daly just shook his head and held out his hands, palm down. 

“Would you rather do this here, on a still climbing wall, wi’ no wind to speak of, or would ye rather your first time be with a load of live bombs aboard a fat ol’ Copper screaming into th’ wind and boarding parties comin’ doon on yer heads? Stow yer complaints, lads, and go grab yer loads!”

Each cadet was handed a bag, already stuffed with what felt like two stone of rocks, or chains, or something else lumpy and heavy. Helena copied Broadkirk and slung the heavy sack over one shoulder, trying to balance herself before and behind; she could keep her right hand for reaching high up, and her left for supporting herself with lower grips. She’d had lessons in dancing and deportment since the age of four, and her balance on two feet was excellent, even with the extra weight--she hoped fervently this would translate to at least not doing any worse going down, than up. 

“Last one up is first doon,” Daly declared as the cadets lined up at the top of the cliff. Helena steeled herself, but snapped her carabiner onto the climbing ropes without hesitating too long. Jaculum would catch her, she told herself, if she should slip. 

The heavy sack over her left shoulder threatened to swing her off the ledge almost under its own power, but she clung tight, stomach muscles clamping as her already-hot shoulders protested, and kept from embarrassing herself too soon. Before long she was two or three yards down, foot- and hand-holds familiar from her recent ascent, and had got herself a shoddy rhythm to the movement: down with the left hand, brace; seek with the toes of one foot, settle it, then move the other; move the right hand down to grip alongside the left, and lower the body; down with the left hand, brace; and so on. The other cadets were trickling over the cliff’s edge, too; bits of rock cascaded down occasionally, rapping her gloved knuckles or landing, she was sure, in her tightly-braided hair, though this was coming loose from its plaiting with the day’s exertion. The sack slipped half-a-dozen times, and she was constantly unclipping and reclipping her carabiners from the guide-ropes; all the while, in the back of her mind, a little voice chanting A prime is a number alone/ No divisor but one and its own….

She stumbled against the quarry floor and jerked again against her carabiner-straps on the guide rope. “Steady, Allen,” a voice rumbled behind her, and with no small shock Helena realized she’d gained the bottom of the cliff. Her fingers, stiff with exertion, did not like to obey as she undid the carabiners from the guide-rope and resettled the now-familiar weight of the loaded sack over her shoulder. 

“Bring your load here, Allen, and ‘ware the other climbers,” Jaculum advised, and Helena stumbled in his direction. Divesting herself of the load, she nearly toppled over the other side upon standing up again. Jaculum gave a rumbling chuckle and put his head down near her, to peer with one slit-pupiled eye. "Comin' along at last," the older Reaper rumbled, his voice burred with the same Northern accent as his Captain. "Aye, an' you'll make good here after too long." Jaculum nodded, raising his head again as the next cadets approached, off-balance as they unshipped their own loads. Helena traded her sack for someone else's, flexed her fingers within their gloves, and waited for the order to climb again.

England--and thus Loch Laggan and the other dragon coverts--had been at war for nearly three-quarters of Helena's life, and the normal order of covert life was, therefore, not normal; still, Laggan was a training covert, for both aviators and their dragons, and therefore was used to a school-house schedule when not actively supporting a military campaign; even with the retreat north, the number of young servingmen and officers occupying the castle and grounds had required a shift to a half-regular rota of schoolroom duties. Cadets, like herself, spent the first three hours of the morning in the classroom, tutored in mathematics, geometry, geography, and writing. Lunch was a hurried affair, given three-quarters of an hour to fill their bellies before another three hours of lessons in skills needed a-dragonback: climbing, marksmanship, fencing, and signals; then a half-hour for tea and back to the classroom for history and French, or Latin, or Spanish. The cadets all served at dinner or set forth and cleared away, finding some time in their duty rota to eat their own dinners; the days ended with smithing and harness-work until the ground-crews were satisfied. The only leisure to be had came Sundays, and then only after morning services: a blessed hour and a half that had seen Helena, the last two weeks, flopped inelegantly across her bunk, dreamless in her exhaustion. Sunday evenings were for washing and mending, scrambling to finish schoolwork, or egg-duty down in the baths.

This was Helena's third turn in the bath-side egg rooms below Laggan's courtyard. She'd seen the eyrie, of course; one could not use the baths without walking past the rows and rows of eggs nestled on the stone shelves, surrounded by heaps of warm, damp sand and scraps of woolen cloth and sacking. Each and every niche was filled, eggs dug into every available inch of space: the accelerated breeding programme Keynes so detested had stretched Laggan's incubating abilities to their very limits. In past years Laggan's remoteness meant that it was the preferred incubator for Longwing eggs, those unique beasts forming the core of Britain's defensive and offensive capability; now the sands cradled Longwing eggs cheek-by-jowl with the eggs of Regal Coppers, Yellow Reapers, Checquered Nettles and Winchesters--these last filled in any available space between the larger eggs, their smaller size allowing them to be tucked in wherever room was afforded them. The Longwing eggs sat still somewhat apart from the other breeds' and were given just a little more room, as though the pride of place they had traditionally enjoyed could not be shed quite as easily as the breeding programme demanded.

The other Cadets--Rogers, a tall lad of nearly ten, and Billoughs, a few months older and no few inches shorter than Rogers--paused at the door to the egg-room, almost unconsciously, and with nearly identical looks of rapt wonder on their faces. Helena had seen nearly every other aviator at Laggan perform the same pause, although after questioning her own cohort of future captains could find no hard-and-fast reason for it. There was reverence in the gesture to which Helena had not been bred. For her own part, Helena paused just before the door to the egg -room to take one last breath of air that smelled only of stone, water, and soap. Past the door the air turned rapidly foetid with the smell of the mushrooms that grew in an adjacent chamber; the cadets were never admitted into that room, and indeed no aviator was, and it remained guarded at all hours by scarlet-coated Marines bearing bayoneted rifles and at their belts, naked swords. 

The boys seemed to not mind the smell, and Helena tries to at least imitate their nonchalance: raised in a house where dust was never allowed to settle and where each and every item of clothing received a thorough powder before and after each wear, her nose seemed to be the last thing to adapt to the aviator's life at Loch Laggan. Rogers glanced at her and at Billoughs, then made for a corner of the room, where the shelves from two walls intersected; Billoughs moved to the other side of the room, leaving the largest open space--for Helena-- facing the rows of mostly Longwing eggs. Helena stepped over, shifting the book she carried from under her arms to her hands; when Billoughs and Rogers paged their own volumes open, she did the same; the three began to read aloud, at more or less the same pace and volume, at about the same time.

Helena had learned that dragons learned speech and language through the shell; recent intelligence from the Continental breeding programmes and even the unexpected example of the rogue Celestial Temeraire had at least led the Corps to try introducing tongues besides English to the dragonets in the shell. Thus the volume from which Helena was assigned to read was in French; Rogers would read to his eggs in German, and Billoghs was allowed to recite to his section of the room in English, from a primer on the history of the Corps. 

Helena's own book was a collection of tales of King Arthur and rather poorly translated, if she were any judge, and she might be: tutored in French from the earliest of her schoolroom days, Helena had received naught but glowing praise from Laggan's French tutors on everything from her accent, to her spelling. Even given the book's age it ought not to have been so badly mangled through the language, and after a few pages Helena stopped reading altogether and instead simply told the eggs the story, as she remembered it, confident that even if her plot was a little muddled at least the poor dragonets would not emerge from the shell asking for a _lavange_ after eating, when they would certainly prefer a _baignade_ , and getting their conjugal tenses mixed all ahoo. 

She dreamed that night in French, as she'd done more than once after her turn at egg-minding. In the dream she scrambled over Jaculum's pebbled hide, looking for handholds while the sack of hen's eggs she carried slipped from her shoulders. Jaculum spun and maneuvered in the air like no dragon made of cliff stone should be able to, and Daly chanted the prime-number limerick in brogued French. Helena jerked awake, feeling sweat trickle down her neck: it had not _quite_ been a nightmare. 

"Look sharp, Cadets!" Daly snapped as the breakfast-bell rang and they scrambled to clear their dishes from the hall tables. They all froze in place as Daly stumped into the dining hall, and Helena's ears weren't the only ones that noted the continual clanging of the bell across the compound: a one-two-three, one-two-three, repeating regularly and with vigor. _Call to stations_ , she realized at last.

"Those of you assigned to crews, report to your dragons!" Daly rapped out, and there was a moment of general chaos as those cadets--Broadkirk and Greeleigh amongst them--sought to clear plates, shrug into coats and pull on gloves, all while retreating from the hall. Greeleigh cast a last look at Helena as she cleared the doors, but Helena couldn't tell if her friend's expression was sympathy, envy, or panic.

“Rest o’ yez,” Daly rumbled, “are assigned as follows.”

Mackenzie, to Laetificat; three others whom Helena knew only in passing were assigned to Fluitare and Vindexia, two Yellow Reapers now cleared for duty again after particularly long periods of recovery after the plague. Two of the boys to a Regal Copper called Grandissimo. Another of the girls to Mortiferous; that left Helena, another girl called Surton whom she did not know well, and two of the boys. 

“Surton,” Daly said, “you’re assigned to Lilly, but she’s out on maneuvers. You’ll go with St Germain and Mortiferous to the rendezvous, and upon Lilly’s arrival, you’ll present yourself to Captain Harcourt as her new runner.”

“Sir!” Surton squeaked, and snapped a salute, her chubby cheeks bright with high color. 

“Allen, Billoughs, Roberts.” Daly faced them down squarely, as though he disliked the orders he was about to give. “The three o’yez has been requested by the Admiral especial, and will gather your belongings and report to Excidium’s clearing at noon. You’ve liberty until that time. Any questions?”

Helena had a thousand, but could read Daly's tone and knew that the offer was a rhetorical formality. She squeezed her hands together behind her back instead and forced herself to reply, “No sir!” in ragged chorus with Roberts and Billoughs. Daly nodded his dismissal, and the four of them--for Surton hand remained, standing at stiff attention, until the formal release--scurried to clear their plates and gather their things with the same haste their cohort had managed before them. 

Mind whirling, Helena half ran to the courtyard, tying up the belt that would keep her flying-coat closed, wondering. The Admiral’s admonishment to not darken her doorstep for a sixmonth still rang in her ears--but Daly had mentioned _requested especial_ , which was surely no fault of hers. She’d grown unused to politics since coming to Loch Laggan, but Helena remembered well her grandmother’s advice to a half-dozen worried wives who would find an excuse to gossip over tea in the summers: _there is always more than one reason to do a thing, no matter who one happens to be._ Philandering husbands did not play the wastrel just because their wives requested from them more steadiness or time with the children; they gambled or wasted away in drink at their own decision. Helena wasn’t supposed to have heard that advice, nor known any of the ladies to whom it was given, but she had, of course, been cursed with a precocious curiosity since her very youngest days, and Wollaton had so many places to hide if one only put forth the effort to find them--

And so: what reasons could the Admiral have for summoning her? As a girl, of course, she was training to be a Longwing captain. For sure and certain the Corps would want all such girl trainees to serve aboard a Longwing and get the measure of the responsibilities--Helena had only worked this out partly in her head, because the other girls didn’t seem to be assigned exclusively to Longwing crews. Equally valuable would be the experience of learning from as many Captains and dragons as possible, so that their experience was varied and well-rounded.

Thus, one possible explanation, but what of another? Helena burst through the heavy courtyard doors, intending to take the shortcut across the hot stones to her dormitory.The yard was so full as to be almost crowded; while their crews had been called to attention, not all of the dragons had been mustered back to their clearings yet. There had been stationed at Loch Laggan a trio of the great Regal Coppers who were still recovering from the Plague, and having been forced back into service almost immediately upon receipt of the cure by the Admiralty, had not had a really satisfactory recovery. The courtyard was a shifting mosaic of red-and-gold bodies, spangled hither and yonder with the almost complimentary blue-and-orange of the Longwings. These, more lurid in color and fiercer in aspect, with their spiked and spurred heads, were equally fascinating as the gigantic Coppers. 

One of these swung into Helena’s path, his bone-spurs nearly scraping the cobbles, and rumbled at her. “Allen,” Mortiferous said in greeting, “Greeleigh tells me you’re assigned elsewhere. I am sorry I couldn’t get you put on my crew.” 

Having skidded to a stop before the great muzzle, Helena put out both gloved hands to pet Mortiferous’ nose. “Your new cadets have been in harness longer than I,” she replied, rubbing the soft muzzle. “I’m sure they’ll be perfectly suited to you.”

“Yes, but I _found_ you, I should get to _keep_ you,” Mortiferous replied, backing his muzzle gently out of her hands and shaking his head. “Where are you assigned, anyway? Whatever dragon it is needs to be mindful of you. Youre still like to fall off, Jaculum says.”

“Old Jack says I’m coming along nicely, and I’ll thank you not to repeat gossip about me,” she retorted, putting hands on hips and striking a pose of utter indignation. Mortiferous snorted, a dragon laugh, which brought looks of alarm from the nearest dragons around him--there was never going to be any easy way to forget that plague-stricken Longwings were a danger to themselves and everything around them, when they started sneezing. 

“Does that mean you’re not actually assigned to Excidium?” Mortiferous asked, a note of hope in his deep voice. 

“I have been assigned to the Admiral, so i suppose yes, I’m off for Excidium.” Helena put one hand in her coat pocket and reached the other out to touch Mort’s nose again. “Do be careful, won’t you?" She asked, suddenly remembering the first time she'd lain her palm on his living hide, feeling then--and knowing now--the incredible strength it contained beneath. 

Mortiferous rumbled, a sound not unlike the purr of one of the Hall's kitchen cats, if many orders of magnitude deeper. "I will if you will," he answered, winked one lurid orange eye.


	4. Chapter 4

Helena considered, briefly, waiting for the boys to arrive before presenting herself at Excidium’s clearing: the Admiral’s warning still rang in her head, and she considered herself not insensible of the danger that may be present in approaching Admiral Roland before the requisite sixmonth had passed. The Admiral, however, was nowhere to be seen in the organized chaos that surrounded her Longwing, and both Rogers and Billoughs strode past Helena (waiting at the edge of the clearing) and made for a lanky, dark haired fellow wearing lieutenant’s bars--with nary a glance her way. She scurried after, trying to sling her awkward pack into a comfortable position over one shoulder as both of the boys had done, and quite conscious of her dignity as the trio approached the officer--Roland’s first lieutenant, Helena surmised, taking in the decoration of his bottle-green coat. 

“...and check the tally on the bombs, Douglass, we were short last time we went to Edinburgh,” the lieutenant was saying, handing back what looked like a tally-sheet to a more junior lieutenant. As flag dragon, Helena knew, Excidium carried the full compliment of servingmen possible for a heavyweight, including four junior lieutenants, two senior lieutenants, and a second-in-command--also a lieutenant. As her mother’s daughter and attendant on the gossip at her grandmother’s teas and luncheons, Helena knew that at least some of these officers were retained in their positions or advanced to others via influence and a wide-reaching network of favors. 

The other officer laughed, and then upon seeing the trio of cadets, coughed, as though there were some joke he should not be sharing with the younger officers. 

"New sprouts, eh?" The first lieutenant clapped his subordinate on the shoulder without looking, and strode over to the three, looming like a veritable tree, Helena thought. The lieutenant frowned, and his moustache--just a touch fuller than regulation might allow, and streaked liberally with gray--dipped down at the corners.

"Which of you are Rogers and Billoughs?" He asked sharply, and the boys made ragged, ill-timed salutes. He raised an eyebrow. "Very well; I'm Lieutenant Crenslow, Excidium's first lieutenant and the Admiral's executive officer. Do you know what that means?" He seemed to be addressing only the boys, and Helena took a dislike to him almost instantly: her expectations had shifted in the last six weeks, it seemed, from knowing herself less-preferred to her younger brothers and their assured patrilineal seniority, to knowing herself equally capable--if not yet equally trained--to any other young aviator in her cohort, regardless of her sex. The treatment, largely absent at Laggan, rankled in a way it never had in London or at Wollaton, coming from this Lieutenant Crenslow. 

"Means I'm in charge of making sure Excidium's crew is in place, on time, doing their jobs, and following orders." The lieutenant didn't wait for the boys' answers. "The Admiral oversees and plans movement and strategy for the entire Aerial Corps, and so we, her crew, must needs do our jobs  
Better than any other crew in the Corps. This is the flag-dragon, lads! And you’ve been assigned to the flag-dragon and the Admiral because she expects the best, and you’re going to be the best. Ent that right?”

“Aye!” Squeaked Billoughs, and he and Rogers threw a pair of salutes so stiff and earnest that Rogers nearly took out his own eye. Helena followed suit, although with less of the boys’ martial enthusiasm--she still felt as though Lieutenant Crenslow wasn’t precisely talking to her. 

“Good lads! See that man there, with the yellow hair and the sword? That’s Ensign Bloughston. Off you go to him to get your packs stored and hear your duties. You’re assigned to him for the moment, and he’ll tell you all your duties and where to latch on. I expect to hear from him each night regarding the execution of your responsibilities, and that you're performing exceptionally. Clear?”

“Aye, sir!” The three cadets said, more or less in unison. 

“Fine, fine! Billoughs and Rogers, dismissed!” Lieutenant Crenslow snapped off his own smart salute and the boys scurried off towards the bulk of the rest of the crew. Helena was shouldering her pack again when Crenslow’s hand came down on her arm. 

“You’ll be Allen, then, eh?” He asked, in a tone much altered from the one he had used to address his new cadets: lower, tight with the effort of keeping his words from being overheard. Helena nodded slowly, lowering again the strap of her pack. Crenslow removed his hand, his manner softening, Helena thought. 

“Allen, you’re not assigned to my crew; Roland’s rather takin’ you along with her on some other assignment. We’re for Edinborough first, and then the Admiral’s got plans for you. She didn’t speak with you about this beforehand?”

“No--” Helena squesaked, then cleared her throat and tried again. “No sir, Lieutenant,” she said, carefully, still not sure if she disliked this man. 

“Ah well.” Lieutenant Crenslow straightened and looked at the sky, as if to check the time. “I’m sending you along to Bloughston, Ensign Bloughston, as well. Tell ‘em you’re an extra set of hands for this trip but that you are only for Edinborough; he’ll as like have you loading pistols the whole trip. Matter of fact, tell ‘em that’s what I said to have you at. Keep you busy. We’ve got enough reason to have the riflemen armed on this trip. Once we land in Edinburgh, you find me and I’ll hand y’ over to the Admiral. Clear?”

“Aye sir, Lieutenant,” Helena said, delivering her own salute (wobbly, but not enough that the Lieutenant paid it any mind).

“Very good, Cadet. Dismissed.”

There was a trick to loading a pistol or musket in mid-air: one must use one’s body to block the wind, or angle one’s hands so that the dragon’s body served as a bulwark against the rush of air as he flew. Helena lost both the ball and swabbing on the first two rifles she was handed before she caught on to the older riflemen’s trick of twisting into Excidium’s side. She dropped the third ball as well, but it fell into the crease of her knee, pressed against the harness where she was latched on, and she was able to retrieve it without needing to ask for yet another one. Ammunition was common, but needed time to prepare properly, and the lieutenant of the riflemen, named Rendle, glared at her through his green-glass flying goggles when she lost the second ball and wadding. Still, it only took the first half-hour of the long flight to Edinburgh for her to load the five spare rifles, and in the second half-hour she had the ten spare pistols loaded as well: once done with that, Rendle had her move to sit next to the signal-ensign, Brownlowe, who drilled her on the signals in the leather-bound book that was kept dangling from Excidium’s harness at each lookout point. 

It was two and three-quarter hours from Laggan to Edinburgh, and the jolting thud with which Excidium landed in the covert yard seemed to rattle the branches of the bare trees around them. The only other dragons visible were couriers: Winchesters and Greylings, from what Helena could see, and these gave Excidium a respectful berth as he settled back on his haunches, cat-like: he could not lay down on his belly, as the cargo netting hadn’t been dropped; their stop here was evidently only to be brief. 

“Up you get, Cadet,” Rendle called, waving. Helena’s ears still rang with the whistle of the wind and she fumbled just a little with her carabiners, but managed to get herself along the harness and to the ladder-strap with only a little effort. Rendle tossed her her pack as she descended, and the ground beneath her feet was at once jarringly solid and welcome in its stillness. She didn’t lose her head at heights--not at all!--but her inexperience, in light of the lifetime spent aloft evident amongst the other officers, was often telling. A dragon was not a carriage, nor a horse, and there was still nothing else at all in her experience to compare to the sensation of flight. 

Up at Excidium’s head, the Admiral was conferring with both the dragon and Lieutenant Crenslow. Exciduim was grumbling wordlessly at Admiral Roland’s instructions; she scratched almost absently at a spot between his bone-spur and ear, as though to soothe him. Helena didn’t think it was precisely what the dragon wanted, but he only seemed resigned, not angry. 

“...and if anyone bothers you about it, Michael, just remind them that I will only be there tomorrow at dinner-time at the least, and that there isn’t anything you can do about it at all, so they’d best stop asking,” Admiral Roland was adding as Helena approached. “The couriers will bring me as fast as ever they might, but there are still two hundred miles between Edinburgh and Liverpool after I return here, and no amount of bothering you is going to change that.” The Admiral turned to look at Excidium, continuing to stroke his cheek. “And you, my dear, help Lieutenant Crenslow keep the poor fools at bay, will you? I will meet you all at the militia camp tomorrow, and never you worry. These couriers know who they’re carting around.”

Excidium grumbled again and turned his head sideways to rub against her shoulder. “They jolly well better had,” he muttered, and held his foreleg out to Lieutenant Crenslow. 

“Command is yours, Lieutenant; godspeed, and good flying, and I will see you for tea tomorrow,” Roland said, and with a handshake and salute Crenslow scrambled up Excidium’s shoulder to latch on at the base of the dragon’s neck, where otherwise Admiral Roland would have sat. The Admiral and Helena backed away from Excidium’s head and the dragon turned, nosed towards the overcast sky, and launched himself with a tremendous, shattering leap. Now the trees really did rattle and the Longwing swept his great orange-and-blue wings out and down, cupping air and rising with incredible speed towards the clouds.

Helena regretted her early removal of her goggles: she brushed bits of grit from her eyes and sneezed. The noise seemed to remind Roland that she was there, and the Admiral turned, sliding her own goggles up to her forehead.  
“You and I are for Nottingham and Wollaton Hall,” she said without preamble. From inside her flying-coat the Admiral fished a folded paper, and Helena could see the franking and direction writ on the front: Wollaton Hall and her grandmother’s flowing, spidery script. She gasped in spite of herself. 

“Your _family_ has agreed to leave your enlistment in the Corps uncontested, on the condition that I bring you myself to Nottinghamshire and prove you have run away to join us willingly. That you haven’t been …” she unfolded the letter, scanned it briefly, and read, “ _seduced away from a Good and Righteous Upbringing by the Tales and Rumours of her Prodigal Uncle, who, while possessed of a Good Heart and Intention, has none-the-less Stain’d the Good Name of his Family with his Mis-guided Action._ ”

The Admiral folded the letter again and replaced it in her coat. “I do not pretend to know if they mean to snatch you back and bring a law-suit instead,” she said warningly. “And I don’t mean to waste time I don’t have on this matter, Helena. I value the courage you showed in coming to us, and I know you’ve been progressing well, but I have an entire war to fight, do you understand? I cannot fight your family too. Not now. We will take a courier and try to evade patrols on our way to Nottingham. I can spare three hours to be dressed-down by your father and grandfather, and then _I_ must be back here. If I am not in Liverpool by tea-time tomorrow Excidium will take it upon himself to come find me, and then he will be caught by the French and likely killed.”

No other words were needed, apparently, for the Admiral turned on her heel and strode towards the covert's barracks building. Helena had to scramble to catch her up and didn't manage to do so before the Admiral reached the doors. 

As at Laggan, the first floor of the covert's barracks was given to command offices and muster rooms; unlike at Laggan, where the dining hall was a main feature of the dormitory building, Edinburgh's smaller mess hall was part and parcel with the barracks, and the Admiral sent the runner who'd been waiting at the front door to bring her a cup of coffee. "And I'll have a Corps solicitor waiting, as well," she told the boy, a little younger than Helena herself, before he scampered off. The Admiral paced the front hall, slapping her leather gloves from hand to hand, while Helena did her best to stand at attention _and_ think through the upcoming confrontation--for a confrontation would be inevitable. Her grandfather was an Earl and had always expected obedience from everyone in the family; what he would make of the Admiral...Helena could not imagine, not in the least. He would forbid Helena's ever leaving the Hall again, and do whatever legal and possible to enforce the prescription--would he have her betrothed? Not committed to bedlam, surely, or locked in her room: her grandfather had never even threatened Uncle Will with confinement, she'd heard her father say; so strong was his belief in the abolitionist movement that confinement as punishment was anathema to him. But having the Admiral arrested or bringing forth a lawsuit were not outside the realm of possibility; neither was invoking divine parental rights to override the oath of service Helena had undertaken in that first week at Laggan. 

"At ease, Allen," the Admiral sighed after a moment, and Helena's attention snapped back to herself. Here was the runner again, with a tray of sandwiches besides the Admiral's coffee, and behind him a young man: also wearing bottle-green but under a flying-coat, with the chest-crossing harness that held a pistol under each arm and a cutlass at his hip: the necessity of a small-dragon captain who flew, without benefit of riflemen or bellmen, through dangerous territory: likely a light-weight courier captain, and if Helena had learned anything over the last two months, it was that the courier captains were living dangerous lives while Napoleon occupied Britain. 

“And Captain Hollin, good man,” Admiral Roland said, accepting his salute with another nod and offering her hand to shake. “Gentlemen, this will be a hard flight and no mistake. Your Elsie will be burdened with the three of us, Hollin, and will still have to make all speed for Nottingham. We will cross the path of at least four French patrols, unless our intelligence is badly wrong, both coming and going; with three of us, Elsie can offer no fight if she is spotted, and we must not be spotted. Three and a half hours’ hard flying. Is she fed today?”

“Aye, sir, fed this morning on a whole sheep and some of Temeraire’s porridge; she’ll do fine to Nottingham and back on half that much, and I daresay the French dragons ent eatin’ half so much anyway,” Captain Hollin answered confidently. “And she’s big enough, sir, that we three shant be as much a burden as we might for another courier beast.”

“Good man, Hollin,” The Admiral repeated. “Loaded pistols all--even you, Allen--and let’s away. An’ were sooner done, if done quickly.”

Helena clutched the pistol the Admiral passed back to her, feeling her own hands inadequate to holding the weapon; like all cadets, she had target practice and fencing at Loch Laggan, but until now her knowledge of the use of a pistol or sword against a murderous Frenchman was still all theoretical, for as fierce as Greeleigh had played the part of marauding invader during their lessons. Now she tried to shove the enormous thing into her harness-belt next to the knife she’d taken to carrying, like the other girls, and tried to decide what part of this journey was most to blame for the knots tying and untying themselves in her belly: was it the immediate threat of danger from the promised French patrols? Was it the terror of knowing herself subject now to the Admiral’s close scrutiny as never before--she, who had promised so much for the opportunity to live around dragons? Or was it the oncoming rush of bottomless dread that made her wish for the ground to swallow her up whole, if only to avoid the inevitable embarrassment and tongue-lashing she would receive on the steps, surely, of Wollaton Hall itself. 

True to her captain’s promise, the courier Elsie was remarkably quick, as well as large for her size: Helena’s barely-trained eye could tell that Captain Hollin was a conscientious captain, for Elsie’s purple-grey hide almost glowed in the weak winter sunlight; her eyes were bright and inquisitive as the party approached to board her, and she greeted the Admiral with a respectful bob of her head, Once in the air (Helena wedged between Captain Hollin and Admiral Roland), Elsie’s speed was incredible, even for all that she zigged and zagged across the countryside, sometimes swooping low to the tree-tops, the easier for to drop down and take cover; other times they swung high into the obscuring clouds, that Elsie’s pale belly might make a grounded observer lose sight of her in the clouds. They crossed the foreseen patrols--three in total--before two hours had passed. Elsie had made excellent time indeed, Helena mused, as the little dragon landed gracefully in the driveway of Wollaton. The liveried and armored guards at the gate showed their weapons and shouted a challenge, but Captain Holland waved them off almost before they’d taken a step towards Elsie. 

“Admiral Roland to see the Lord and lady Allendale, if you please,” The Adimiral slid down Elsie’s side without benefit of a dismounting step; while Helena climbed down more carefully, Hollin swung his leg over the pommel of his seat and followed the Admiral’s example, half-slidng and half-jumping to the ground. Helena’s were the last to hit the ground. 

There, the sweeping curve of the drive; here and here, the carefully-sculpted hawthorn bushes that framed the inner gate to the front-door promenade; just there, the now-bare branches where, in the summer, lush mounds of lilac gave their heavy fragrance to either side of the entrance-hall door itself. The crunch of the fine gravel beneath her uniform boots was at once strange and familiar: the texture an irritant through the thin soles of a lady’s slippers, but distant now beneath her heavier tread. The last weeks before her sudden departure had wrought a transformation on Wollaton: the formal drive now receiving supply-waggons and carts of hastily-packed travellers; the guest rooms, parlors, receiving rooms and private chambers all opened and dressed with barely a proper airing to accommodate the neighbouring households that had fled the French depredations of the countryside to shelter here; the conversion of large swaths of lawn into garden plots for what winter crops could be coaxed out in those last scant weeks before the snow began to fall. 

Still, behind her nerves there was a loosening of breath: the familiar air of Wollaton Hall, sharp now with cold, flooded her lungs as Helena began to breathe again (she hadn’t known at all she was holding her breath). The groundskeepers’ pride still showed here: despite heavy use, the gravel of the drive was raked neatly back away from the verge, and there was not a shed leaf nor twig out of place; the short steps to the hall were, as always, neatly swept. 

“Goodness and heavens, that’s never Miss Helena?” one of the footmen muttered, and a susurrus of voices ran through the yard. None of the faces she saw staring back at here were ones she immediately knew; familiar, yes, but most those to whom she had never been properly introduced. Nurse and Cook would be within, she knew, tending the myriad of domestic duties to which a full country estate was beholden. 

Captain Hollin cleared his throat pointedly, glaring a little at the guards who were making no effort to disguise their fear at proximity to Elsie; though she kept her tail neatly coiled and was furling in her wings as close as she might, she was nearly twice the size of the biggest cart-horse Wollaton would have ever received, and her sides still heaved with an effort to catch her breath: they had flown this last hour very fast, indeed. The guards and the aviators were staring at each other with obvious tension, and not one had yet moved in response to the Admiral’s initial introduction. Helena took a second deep, cooling breath. 

“Hello, everyone. Would someone be so kind as to tell my father and grandmother that Admiral Roland and Captain Hollin and Elsie and I are here, please? And I’m sure Captain Hollin and Elsie would appreciate a drink of water for her and somewhere that she can rest while we’re here--she’s been so very fast and clever this afternoon, bringing us from Edinburgh and without any fighting at all.”

For the span of another heartbeat, no one moved; Helena felt every eye in the carriage-yard upon her, and she forced her expression to remain open, calm, and with the barest hint of a smile and uplifted brows-- _”polite expectation,”_ Mummy called it, _“the look of a girl whose wants can easily be accommodated and will never, ever go so far as to put her benefactor in the way of trouble.”_ Twas a face she hadn’t had to practice much since her flight to Loch Laggan, but as memory served, it would all but open doors here at Wollaton. 

“Good Lord,” muttered one of the footmen, with a start, and gave a very sharp, very belated bow to the Admiral: suddenly the carriage-yard was alive again with movement. Footmen were bowing the Admiral towards the front doors and holding them open; Captain Hollin and Elsie were consulting quickly with a guard, who was pointing them towards the northern side of the house, towards the rear courtyard and stables. Elsie unfurled her wings as Captain Hollin and the guard began to walk in that direction, and then hopped neatly into the air, tucking her legs and forearms beneath herself and winging away towards the paddocks as though she hadn’t just sped across the whole North of the country at top speed. 

“Cadet!” The Admiral called, and Helena was recalled to herself: she scurried up the front stairs, conscious of her duty upon Admiral Roland and trying very, very hard to forget her anxiety at being back home. The great, familiar front doors swung shut behind her, and Helena was back in Wollaton Hall, for better or worse, at last. 

\---

\--

\--

“That the Corps would see fit, madam, to lay such _duty_ at the feet of an eleven-year-old girl, makes me wonder if those in the Admiralty Board truly realize what their officers are demanding of their enlistees,” George Laurence, Lord Allendale, bit out, posture ramrod-straight and hands clasped tight behind his back, as though so bound by the chains of his own rage. “That the enlistment of _girls_ is allowed must, if your statement is to be wholly believed, be considered a necessary evil--but to permit a well-bred young lady, naive enough to run away from home on the barest whim, to be trained up as a _serving officer_ and subject her to to all of the dangers and hardships of a lifetime of servitude and warmongering--”

Jane had heard worse; much worse, and at louder volume, from those same Admiralty fellows that Laurence’s brother was now bandying about as a poorly-veiled threat; she kept her expression neutral, and her tongue between her teeth for most of Lord Allendale’s diatribe, but at this last she found herself unable to still her objections. 

“A service and a duty undertaken by many noble and common families across Britain, my lord, including my own and including yours. I understand your objections to your daughter’s remaining in service, but there is nothing I will do to turn away a young woman willing and able to serve her country. Helena is being asked nothing that I have not answered myself, nor my own daughter; nor my own mother and her mother before her.” Seated, she fixed Lord Allendale with the steely glare that had cowed a generation of enlisted men and officers alike before him: knowing that the scarring on her face made her aspect much more irregular, if not fearsome, and that her practice with these same arguments--over and over and over again, with the Admiralty Board--had shown her, time and again, the superior of any man who wanted to dictate the terms of her service, or any other female captain’s.  
Lady Allendale, with whom Jane had become acquainted on their previous pell-mell retreat across the north country, cleared her throat delicately and leaned in to place a hand on her son’s arm. “George, please believe me when I say that duty has called this family, many times, and duty has answered and rewarded us in its turn. Helena has taken the shilling, so to speak, and made her vow of service. There is no good that will come of forcing her to relinquish that service.”

“No good, Mother? No good? What of the good that will be done of simply removing her from harm’s way?” Allendale surged from his place before the hearth into a furious pacing, “Were this Ethan--were she my son rather than my daughter, I might be assuaged, _but she is my daughter_. She is to be educated--protected--raised to the life she deserves, not lashed to some slavering beast and made to fight for her very life--”

“George!” Lady Allendale broke in, scandalized. To Jane, she said, “Please excuse his excesses of temper, Admiral Roland. While I have had the pleasure of dear Temeraire’s acquaintance and conversation, my eldest son has not yet had the opportunity for introduction. He is still beholden to several rather simple impressions of dragon-kind.”

Jane, privately, rather enjoyed seeing Lord Allendale splutter in impotent indignation at this. His manner of address made clear from their first introduction that the recently-minted Earl did not care if Jane herself was an Admiral or a scullery-maid: only the constant reminder of her frogged and medal-pinned coat, and her admiral’s epaulets, kept him from berating her like the upstart jezebel he obviously considered her to be. His own wife had not joined them; Lady Allendale, as gracious as her son was ill-tempered, had excused her daughter-in-law’s absence with the entirely reasonable explanation that she wished only to assure herself of Helena’s health and well-being after so long and unexpected an absence. Jane was glad that the cadet and her mother were not privy to this audience: three forceful personalities, accustomed to the habit of obedience from their subordinates, were nearly too much for the small study. Lady Allendale, with a lifetime’s practiced grace, was at the least using her gifts to keep her son’s blusterings at a bare level of civility: had she not been in the room, Jane was certain she would have been tempted and more to draw her sword on the man. 

Upon their first meeting, Jane had recognized Laurence’s stiff adherence to the demands of duty as having their roots in his mother’s _noblesse oblige_. Now she could see, too, (if George Laurence’s temper was any indication of their seldom-mentioned father’s disposition) where he had grown practiced in his rigid self-restraint. 

“If you will indulge me, my lord,” Jane spoke into the hot silence, careful to keep her voice level, even friendly: “can you tell me what kind of life you imagined for your daughter, had she not chosen to enlist in the Aerial Corps?”

The Earl slowed his pacing and glared at her for a moment before answering. “As I said: an education, of course; a fine education in literature, social grace, and what mathematics for which she proves herself capable. Once she is of an age to be properly debuted, I expect she might entertain no few offers of marriage; provided, of course, that a suitable husband might be found. She might otherwise take employment as a tutor or governess until such a man is available. I would expect her to have a care for her husband’s affairs and estate, to raise and educate her own children, and to perhaps take up some suitable hobby as a lady might enjoy, like entertaining, or painting, or perhaps riding and breeding horses.”

“And what would be your expectation of her if she confessed that she did not wish to be debuted? Married? Confined to an estate?”

“She knows what is expected of her. My daughter will do the duty to which she was born and raised. It is hardly _confinement_.”

And thus, for another quarter-hour, while Hollin no doubt paced the paddock or courtyard in which he and Elsie had been directed; while the Earl’s wife might be tying their daughter to a chair to prevent her leaving; while Jane herself fenced words with Laurence’s brother, the subject swinging, pendulum-like, from what Helena _should_ do and was expected do to what she had, in fact, _already done_. A discharge on grounds of family objection was not unheard of in the Corps, although the occurrence was rare: what Jane dreaded more, and more as she heard the Earl’s constantly-repeated objections, was the chaining of Helena’s bright interest and curiosity and courage around dragons, to the hearth-stone of familial expectation. Jane had seen dozens of likely girls come through Excidium’s crew and the other Longwing formations. Not all of them were clever, or smart, or had the making of captains; yet captains they would all be, to assure the continuation of the Longwing as a measure of Britain’s aerial superiority. Helena was an oft-sought combination of courage and calculation that could be shaped into a brilliant officer--if she were permitted to leave this house again. 

“George, my dear, that is enough and more than enough,” Lady Allendale broke in at last. Her son turned to her with an expression of shock that Jane might have found comical, had she not been so near her own wits’ end. “Like your brother, your daughter has committed herself to the patriotic cause of defense of England--a noble cause, and a necessary one. There is no argument you can make to the Admiral that will nullify Helena’s choices. Understand that I speak from experience,” she raised a warning finger when he began to object, “and with the benefit of my long perspective I can assure you that having lost this argument with- with your brother, I would not for the world turn back the clock that I might have it again.”

Again, the twelfth Earl of Allendale looked like he might object to his mother’s interference, and Jane noted--again--that he very nearly flinched at the bare mention of Laurence. Jane could sympathise. It seemed easier and easier to have him far away and occupied elsewhere; she did not wish his execution for all the silver in Araby, but to have him out of sight and out of mind was easier by far on her heart and her conscience. 

“I will release her to you under two conditions,” Lord Allendale said finally, low, and defeated. 

“I have already brought her here to you, on the eve of a significant campaign while our country is occupied by a hostile foreign nation,” Jane shot back, “removing myself and my dragon from the front lines. I am not inclined to entertain any further ‘conditions’, my lord.”

“The first,” he declared, as though she had not spoken, “is that you will keep her from harm’s way, insofar as you are able.”  
“We are at war, my lord. We are all of us, even here, in harm’s way.”

“You must have clerks, quartermasters, aides-de-camp, that sort of thing. Assign my daughter to them. Keep her from the fighting. You’re Admiral of the Aerial Corps; this must be within your purview.”

Jane narrowed her eyes. Removing Helena from work on a crew would remove her from officer’s training as effectively as locking her in this great house. That could not be allowed. 

“And your second condition?”

“That you will keep her from contact or notice by her uncle or his beast. My _brother_ has done enough damage to his neice and her prospects and future; I will not have her further seduced by his ...his anarchist tendencies. I will not have him damage the reputation of his niece any more than he has already damaged his own family name.”

It gave Jane a hard kind of pleasure to reply thus: “As to your second condition, sir, if your brother is able to keep his head from the noose for any length of time then yes, I shall endeavor to stop contact between them. As to your first,” she stood, straightening her jacket with a brisk tug, “I cannot guarantee any degree of safety, even on our flight back to Edinburgh. I regret the toll that Helena’s enlistment has taken on your family, but the fact remains that she is now, and desires to continue as, a serving-officer in His Majesty’s Aerial Corps. She has the makings of a fine captain and it is my intention that she make captain after all is said and done. With those assurances, my lord, I am afraid you must count yourself content.”

He nodded, stiffly, once, then sat hard at the desk and did not look up as his mother rose and offered Jane her hand. 

“Thank you for coming all this way, Admiral,” Lady Allendale said, as though she had not spent the last hour watching Jane and her son throw verbal daggers at one another. She was, perhaps, more steady than Jane had previously given her credit for. “Please allow me to walk with you to retrieve our Helena, and I will of course make sure you are packed some provisions for your return flight.” Jane found herself guided effortlessly out of the study; George Laurence, Lord Allendale, did not follow them. 

\--

Elsie had snorted at the weight of the basket of provisions that Lady Allendale and her daughter-in-law insisted upon sending with the aviators. “It don’t weight much more than the cadet, Hollin, but it is quit close,” she said, sniffing: there were more than a few pounds of cold chicken, bread, and cheese within the wicker, and despite having eaten a whole fresh sheep herself, well, Elsie was still a growing dragon and would never say no to a snack. As Temeraire often told his militia, it was easier to eat your breakfast than carry it with you. 

Lady Allendale bent slightly to receive Helena’s kiss upon her cheek; Helena turned, and embraced her mother briefly but with a trembling strength that Jane could well imagine, from her own frequent leave-takings with her Emily. Neither woman had put up a quarter the fuss that the Earl had--instead, both mother and grandmother looked on Helena, in her green overcoat and oilskin, gloves and goggles, breeches and field boots, with a teary-eyed expression that seemed remarkably close to pride. _If I had known, when I was a girl…_ Jane could practically hear the echo in the air, though of course neither of their ladyships would ever voice such sentiment where it might be heard. 

The paddock-yard was on the north side of the house. Helena knew well that to take the hallways through Wollaton’s wings, dining-rooms, and the big banquet room from her father’s study to the kitchen yard nearest the stables would be a brisk walk of a quarter-hour at least. One who knew, as she and her brothers did, of the servant’s halls and shortcuts between areas of the great house, might cut five minutes off that trek. She didn’t think her father knew of the shortcuts. Loading Elsie, checking the harness, and making their goodbyes--these had taken a quarter of an hour or more. The door between the kitchen yard had not opened, and her father had not come. 

And then she was climbing aboard again, around the awkward bulk of the hamper, and the sun was setting, bright molten-orange beneath a lowering shelf of stubborn clouds. No time to call on Nurse, or see her brothers, or any of the neighbors who sheltered at the Hall; she had not visited her pony in the stables, nor snuck into the library to snatch any of her favorite books. In the hamper, she knew, were clean shirts and stays and stockings and pantaloons from the laundry; none of her favorite dresses or slippers. She latched on to the harness, hands sure this time in her leather gloves, despite the blurring of tears behind her goggles. The Admiral twisted in her position, turning as if she might say something to Helena; instead, she waved wordlessly to Grandmother and Mummy and gave them a crisp salute. 

Elsie surged into the air, and Wollaton Hall dropped away behind them, rolling lawns and fields washed with the low amber light of the sunset. Helena blinked, seeing the first few windows glow with the evening’s candles and lamps, like jewels dotting the manor’s sides. Mummy and Grandmother were already indistinguishable as Elsie sped towards the sheltering clouds. The little dragon lifted and dropped along her course with each wing-beat, and soon the shrouding mist surrounded them, and Helena’s view of home was gone.


	5. Part II; Chapter Five

Helena’s ears still rang; a horrible, insidious, keening whine that swelled from the base of her neck and seemed to overtake her senses at the most inconvenient of times, and she would have to halt what she was doing, pressing her palms hard over her ears until the beat of her heart overwhelmed the devilish mosquito-tone and the noise subsided. She was not the only one: any who had been near the beach-head at Shoeburyness and who had heard the magnificent, pulsating thunder of the two Celestial dragons, each trying harder than the other to force wave and water to their desires, was afflicted with the dubious souvenir. She’d been aboard Animosia, helping pass the last sacks of incendiaries to the bell-men above, when Temeraire had flashed past, out to sea, and the terrible roaring of the white French Celestial Lien had come rolling back across the water, silencing the guns on both sides. Temeraire had tried to collapse the wave-- _tsunami_ , some of the aviators had called it--but nearly everyone had been sure he’d been swamped in the attempt. His survival, married to the destruction of the fleet and the death of Admiral Nelson, caused such feeling to swell in Helena’s breast as it seemed to her would cause her to faint--and so she tried very hard not to think on it. 

She was a _veteran_ now, a survivor of a major action a-dragonback, cadet no longer but made ensign along with most of the other recruits of her cohort. A _veteran_ , with the overwhelming ringing in her ears as her first scar of battle. There were other, more visible scars, of course: a cut to her forearm during a failed French boarding action, where she’d made due with the long knife she’d been issued to cut the straps of any boarder in reach, and shove them off Animosa’s back to plunge to the field below. There had been one she’d gotten the best of entire, but the second had felt her hacking at his straps and had whirled on her, sword drawn, before she could kick his knees out from under him. 

Flying debris, shrapnel, a dozen bruises and littler cuts she hadn’t remembered receiving: plus the forearm-cut, which had needed stitching, and Helena had the dubious honor of her experience to show the world. 

In the three days since the battle, she’d been assigned to the battery of dragon-surgeons in the Dover covert, and in the scant hours that she had to close her eyes every night, she saw behind her eyelids the myriad ways to extract a musket-ball, to clean a talon-slash or to pack the empty socket where a fang or tooth had been wrenched out. The smell of dragon blood, hot with the tang of iron to it, no longer turned her stomach, and the sight of split hide and shattered scales did not anymore haunt her waking hours. Dorsett, whom she had shadowed the previous day, had at one point mused that the worst of the cases were over--or, as he put it, “past their reckoning”: meaning the dragons who needed attention most urgently to save their lives had either been already seen to, or were dead. 

Helena carried her tin bucket to the cook-pits for the third time that afternoon, as before in search of boiling water to clean the collected tools of the surgeons on rounds. By the time she returned to the clearing where the surgeons had established a central camp, most of the doctors would need their instruments cleaned again; it was closer to the cook-pits than the cistern, and without the need to boil the water there, and so the doctors hadn’t established their own cauldron boiling in camp. Helena didn’t mind the walk to and fro; between the clearings it was nearly quiet, and she didn’t have to think.

The bell rang for teatime not long after her return, and she joined the other ensigns and young officers at the barracks for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread, sipping and chewing as quietly as she could, the action of her tongue and jaw and throat sounding loud inside her head, the noise of the others muffled still, though the ringing did not, for a mercy, swell between her ears. Someone sat next to her with a thump she felt more than heard, and she turned to see Greeleigh heave a grateful sigh to be off her feet. 

“ ‘Allo, Allen,” the other girl smiled gingerly, in obvious deference to the fading bruise on her chin and the scabbed-over split lip she sported. “Feels like I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age, eh?”

Helena bumped Greeleigh’s shoulder companionably with her own, and gave an answering grin. “Hello, Greeleigh. Glad to see you made it out with most of your good looks intact!”

“Oh, aye, my suitors and swains are fair swooning with relief to see I still have all my teeth!” Greeleigh laughed. “Managed to keep my feet when Mortiferous got boarded, at least. Can’t say as I kept the Captain from being killed, but I sh--I shot at least two, and call myself satisfied with it.”

Helena heard her friend’s voice catch, but decided that the politer thing to do would be to ignore it. They were both serving-officers now; the future would only hold more of the same.  
“I did for one, myself, that I know of,” Helena replied, and took another sip of her coffee. _Did for one_ , she thought--recalling the impact of her heel on the man’s knee, the grate of her knife through the thick leather of his harness-straps, the shockingly empty place aboard Animosia’s flank where the man had landed, and hooked himself on, and then was suddenly gone; the clank of his carabiner rings, shredded straps flapping in the wind of Animosia’s passage, empty of the man they’d anchored. 

“How’s Mortiferous?” She asked by way of distracting them both. “I’ve been with the surgeons since we came here, and I haven’t been to see him, but I think that’s as good a sign as any.”

“Oh, he came through all right. Some harness to mend, of course, and burned along the edge of his left wing by a stupid little Flamme-de-Gloire, but he turned on her and knocked her straight out of the sky without the need to spit. He’ll mend. I’m sure he’d like the chance to say hello when you get a moment. You’re on doctor’s duties still, then?”

“Ayup,” Helena confirmed, and grinned with her friend at the farmer’s brogue she affected. “I’ve pulled out a few musket balls, but mostly it’s fetching bandages and water and getting growled at by men and beasts.”

“I thought you were assigned to Excidium when we were all still at Laggan?”

“No, I was only to accompany the Admiral…” and Helena told an abbreviated version of her visit with Admiral Roland to Wollaton Hall and her family--leaving out significant details, of course: she thought she did rather well, making it sound as though her family were tenants at the Nottingham estate, and not the Earl's own family. 

“And Sanderson’s bell-men were short handed when we got here, so I was assigned there for the battle, but he’s released me to the surgeons without orders to return, so I suppose I’m not under any orders at the moment, once all the dragons are seen to,” she concluded, just as the bell rang to signal the end of the tea-time. All around them, aviators made various noises of complaint but got to their feet, returning coffee and teacups to the dish-cart. There were no slices of bread left to snatch, and no wonder: they’d only just started receiving a trickle of supply from London; yesterday there had been coffee only for the senior officers, but there were rumors of cheese _and_ eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast. 

The Dover covert, and the London, seethed with dragons in the two weeks following the action at Shoeburyness. Helena wasn’t formally assigned to Animosia and Sanderson, but did not disdain the company of those fellows, nor of the smaller dragons (Yellow Reapers and Winchesters, mostly) who bedded down in the crowded clearing around the one-time flag-dragon and her crew. On her rounds with the surgeons, Helena was able to see some of her training-mates--Greeleigh and Broadkirk most frequently--and made the acquaintance of several other young ensigns. 

The difficulty lay, she discovered, in avoiding the one person she was forbidden to see. 

Admiral Roland had laid down this law before they returned from Wollaton: she was not to seek out her Uncle Will, nor Temeraire-- _especially_ Temeraire, who would very likely take the existence of a blood relation of Will’s to mean an expansion of his own crew and insist that his rank as Colonel entitled him to Helena’s service aboard. No; the Admiral had made that much of a promise to her father and grandmother, and insofar as it was possible for her to do so, she would see that Helena stayed well away from her uncle, and this was proving almost comically _impossible_ to avoid. Unassigned to formation or formal guard, William Laurence seemed to his niece to be everywhere she went: clearings of dragons she visited with Dr Keynes or Dorset; the cook-pits where Helena needed to refill the surgeons’ basins; or Temeraire would be in conference with the herdsmen or quartermasters when she needed to fetch supplies. “Cor, _he’s_ a shame and no mistake,” Broadkirk murmured one afternoon, jerking her chin towards the edge of Animosia’s clearing. Finally at liberty from the surgeon’s rounds, the girls had returned to Animosia’s clearing, and had been put to picking stitches out of ruined harness so that the wire-threaded straps might be put again to use elsewhere. Helena followed her gaze and smothered a gasp: not ten yards away stood Uncle Will, his back to her, sandy hair in a neat queue that fell down his shoulder, standing nearly at attention before Sanderson. 

“Wha--” Helena swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried again: “What d’you mean? Isn’t that...Laurence?”

Broadkirk sighed, hunching over her pile of scraps. “Aye, of Temeraire. A first-rate and no mistake, and not hard on the eyes, neither. Don’t seem fair that he should be captain of a _Celestial_ , and so good-lookin’, _and_ a traitor, to boot. What a waste.” The older girl clucked her tongue, as though the hated title of _traitor_ stung her sensibilities less than the broken bits of wire poking from the ruined harness stung her fingertips, disdaining the barrier of her leather gloves. Helena swallowed again, trying to smother the ball of shame that burnt in the pit of her stomach: _no one knows_ , she repeated fiercely to herself, everyone thinks your name is Allen! No one knows! 

“But is he...is he _really_ a traitor?” She asked, low, trying very hard not to whinge.

“Oh, I dunno, Allen, did he _really_ steal the Cure and take it to France?” Broadkirk sneered. “That’s giving comfort and aid to the enemy, that is, and them that does it is _traitors_. I’d have ruther he didn’t, too, and take his dragon with him, but ..” she shrugged, somewhat theatrically, Helena thought critically. “That’s a hanging offence, and means Temeraire’s out of harness, too. A damned waste.”

“Seems to me...seems to me he did somewhat charitable, not letting the French dragons die,” Helena muttered, not wanting to attract either the older girl’s ire, nor the attention of the two men-- _three_ men, now that she looked--at the edge of the clearing.

“Oh aye, and may the good Lord bless him for it when he gets to meet Him,” Broadkirk agreed, “but here on Earth ‘tis a hangin’ offence. Wha, Allen,” she said shrewdly, eyeing Helena, “I don’t think there’s a gel in the Corps who wishes him to hang, but he was Roland’s lover before he turned his coat, and from what the other Captains have said there was no turning his head from her. Mallory, who is mid over on Lily, _she_ says that she seen him in his skivs once, and …” Broadkirk gave an expansive roll of her eyes and a sliding whistle that even Helena could understand. She knew, in a general sort of way, that there was much less restriction in the Corps between men and ladies--they served on crews together, facing the same dangers and fighting side-by-side, and from gossip and general practice she _also_ knew that the adult officers did not disdain to bathe together sometimes, when conditions demanded it, or to sleep together. Women in the corps were expected at some point to get with child: to birth an heir for their dragon, in the case of the Longwing captains, or to provide more aviators who could grow up in the life and not disdain or fear the company of dragons. There had been no shortage of casual discussion of these facts among Helena’s cohort of trainees and the older girls who served on Animosia and the other dragons; still, her learned vocabulary raced somewhat farther afield than her understanding, and while she was sure Uncle Will, for example, was a fine figure for a man, she still could not quite imagine having such thoughts about _any_ man or boy of her acquaintance. Especially the boys she was currently assigned with aboard Animosia, _or_ any of the boys from training, like Rogers and Burroughs, _or_ any of Animosia’s older lieutenants or midwingmen. Or...anyone, really. Helena heaved a sigh, rife with frustrations she could not name, and Broadkirk, with the benefit of two whole years’ more experience with both dragons and boys, nodded sagely.

“A waste indeed, eh?”

Temeraire was almost as difficult to avoid in person, although with the added weight of his field commission and rank of Colonel, it was certainly easier to avoid his _notice_. Helena had sat to dinner several times in her life with Uncle Will; Temeraire, she had never met. And he would go _visiting_ , like the neighbors in London and at Wollaton: arriving quite unannounced at this clearing or that, usually accompanied by at least two unharnessed beasts (more if they were Yellow Reapers)--although Helena’s endless knowledge of proper guest deportment was satisfied to see that Temeraire usually brought with him some token or gift: more often a bauble or a trinket, as he was trying very hard to accommodate the dragons to his way of thinking regarding food and supply, lauding their daily porridge ration and the efficiency of the cook-pits rather than bringing what Helena understood was the normal gift between dragons, that is, a haunch of cow or a sheep. 

On the afternoon that Temeraire paid a second visit to Animosia’s clearing, Helena was being schooled, along with the other ensigns and cadets, at bladework: nothing she was loathe to learn, of course, but in this, as with so many things in an aviator’s life, she lagged behind her fellows for lack of experience, not enthusiasm. She had been disarmed at least four times now, despite the lack of hostility in her opponent, a lanky, teenaged midwingman called Rhodes. 

“Cut! Withdraw! Thrust! Withdraw! Lunge! Withdraw!” First Lieutenant Simmons barked rhythmically, as their two ragged lines traded measured blows across the field. “The blade returns to the same position every time! Cut--and _guard!_ Thrust and _guard_! Lunge and _guard!_ This is the only time you can count on the man you face to do what you expect! The next man you face will be trying to kill you!” 

Helena wasn’t bad with her blade--just unpracticed, and much better with a pistol--and knew she needed the practice, same as the other ensigns. Still it was a relief when a little grey-and-blue dragon landed behind their lines, chirping; one of the Turkish ferals, troublemakers and piratical to the last but at the same time, very neat flyers and too clever by half, according to Simmons. Suddenly the low rumble of Animosia’s and Temeraire’s conversation, previously drowned out by the noise of the crew’s practice, became audible again overhead: Temeraire calling out in the whistling, clicking Durzaugh, the dragon-tongue, and Animosia offering a few words, albeit much less fluently.  
“Hallo, Simmons,” Animosia called a moment later, raising her head from the conference with Temeraire and the feral, “can you be spared a mo’?” 

The rest of the company drooped almost immediately where they stood: Simmons’ instruction conveyed a great deal of enthusiasm for the art of fencing, but was relentless. Helena blew a breath upwards and tried to scrape loosened strands of hair from her sweaty forehead, the back of her gloved hand providing no help, only adding a smear of dirt to her cheek and giving no relief. When Rhodes passed her a dipper from the water-barrel, she sipped with her customary delicacy, but did not disdain the full dipper. 

Dragons did, on occasion, attempt to keep their conversations private, but this was not a simple undertaking for three beasts whose smallest topped ten tons. Helena was as practiced at overhearing ( _eavesdropping,_ her inner voice whispered) as any of the maids at Wollaton --indeed, they had been her tutors--but she was still too blown from sword-practice to pay close attention until Rhodes poked her hard in the shoulder, and looking around, she joined the rest of the crew in snapping to attention and saluting as Simmons strode back to their lines. 

“Everything alright, sir?” Rhodes ventured, as the lieutenant approached. 

“Right as rain, midwingman. I’ve been called to a conference, is all,” Simmons answered. “Jorgenson! Take over, and keep drilling this exercise until every man gets it right!” The burly second lieutenant, Jorgenson, stepped smartly out of line (much to the relief of his opponent, one of the bellmen), and saluted Simmons a second time; Simmons clapped him gravely on the shoulder before returning the salute and stepped away, going to the trestle-table bench where he, along with most of the crew, had discarded hats and coats at the start of their exercise. For once, Helena was not alone in her confusion, although it seemed that about half of the crew were used to whatever transpired between the first and second lieutenants, and Rhodes leaned over to one of the other mids and whispered, “What’s that about, hey?”

“The reshuffle must be official,” the other lad replied, eyeing Simmons as the first lieutenant carefully donned his coat. “Looks like Simmons might be off elsewhere, and Jorgenson might be gettin’ his step.”

“Reshuffle?” Helena blurted. The other boy looked at her, and nodded. 

“Aye. Any major action, dragons’ll be injured, killed, retired. Crews killed in action or someone’ll do something terribly heroic on his own. Crew assignments get shuffled around to fill in gaps, see? We didn’t lose so many harnessed beasts at this last one, but we did see a great big butcher’s bill. I imagine Simmons isn’t the only one of us who is reassigned, Sanderson bein’ for the home-front and Animosia never back up to her old strength, poor old gel.” 

While at Dover Helena and her training-comrades had fallen into the habit of visiting after supper, when most lower-ranking aviators had at least an hour of liberty, especially while in the coverts where harness repairs and supply requisitions could be handled more easily than in the field. When she didn’t appear at the mess hall for the meal, Broadkirk, Hadley, and Greeleigh went looking, and found her in Animosia’s clearing, scrubbing furiously at a boot-heel with a bristle brush, tears streaming down her face. 

“Why, Allen!” Hadley cried, “whatever has that boot done to you?” It was meant as a jest, but the younger girl’s face, set like a storm and streaked with tears and sweat and boot-black, did not break; she only looked up at her cohort, and burst into fresh sobs. 

The other girls, as conscious of their shared dignity as any other servingmen, took up posts to the fore and starboard of Helena’s bench, blocking her from view of the clearing’s main entrances, while Greeliegh straddled the bench opposite their friend, gently taking the bristle brush and boot from Henela’s trembling fingers. She snapped a mostly-clean handkerchief from her trouser pocket and handed it over, then joined the other girls in politely ignoring Helena’s distress while sh got herself under some semblance of control. 

“Has they taken you off Animosia, then? Why, where are you to go next?” Broadkirk asked when Helena had stopped taking the great, whooping breaths that powered her sobs. “Can’t have put you anywhere too unpleasant--any bad day aboard a dragon is worth five good days on the ground, they say!”

Helena blew her nose again. “The herdsmen,” she choked out, “I’ve been placed with the herdsmen!”

The other three gasped with indignation and anger and Helena resumed her crying. “Never!” Broadkirk said in disbelief, pronouncing the word with venom, like a swear. “Why, you've served in a major action! Quit yourself with distinction, didn’t you, and made ensign for it?” 

“You’re a _girl_!” Hadley declared in shock.” They can’t take a _girl_ out of harness, not when she’s training to be a _captain_! Talk of cutting off the nose and spiting the face! And whyever would they? You’re a fine aviator, Allen, even if you’re late to it!”

“Allen,” Greeleigh said, the only calm voice, reaching out to take Helena by both shoulders and leaning down to look her full in the face, “Allen, you've got to be mistaken. What _exactly_ were you told?”

Helena gulped in a deep, hot breath, hiccoughed, then took in another and blew it out slowly through pursed lips: similar to the calm breathing the surgeons had ordered of a rifleman on Lily’s crew when Helena had been assisting in the amputation of the man’s foot; afterwards, she’d seen Broadkirk and Hadley again for the first time since Laggan, and been glad to reestablish their friendship. 

“They said….Lieutenant Simmons said I--I was for the shepherds. He said, ‘off to the shepherds with you, Allen, and good luck,’ and _saluted_ me!” Helena swiped angrily at her cheeks with the sodden handkerchief. “Like a bloody joke!”

Hadley growled and spat. “I know Sanderson don’t like girls on his crews, but I didn’t think he’d poisoned his subordinates that far. Bloody joke indeed! To laugh at you at a time like this!”

“Hold on, he said _shepherds_?” Greeleigh asked at the same time. Helena nodded, looking from one girl to the next: Broadkirk and Hadley looking murderous, and Greeleigh--Greeleigh just looked confused. “I think,” she said, slowly, “I think that perhaps you might have...have cause to ask that your orders be clarified. Everyone’s done with supper; do you want to go by the officer’s club to see if one of the Admiral’s clerks can verify this for you?”

Helena stared at her a moment, then hiccoughed again and nodded. The others waited while she pulled the much-scuffed boot on and stood, and the four of them beat a path through the covert to the main barracks and officer’s mess. 

As it happened, none of the four of them could identify an Admiral’s clerk on sight--but upon arriving at the door, found Admiral Sanderson just leaving. He scowled at seeing the four of them, the three others arranged protectively around Allen, and Helena thought privately, in her misery, that Hadley was right, and Sanderson, for all his decades in harness, didn’t like girls serving. 

“Sir,” Greeleigh said, snapping a salute that stopped the other three in their tracks and was hastily copied, “We has a question for you, sir, if you please.”

“At ease, cadet,” Admiral Sanderson answered sourly, looking over their cohort. Helena had scrubbed her face at the water-barrel and done her best to tidy herself up, but she knew from experience her face was still blotchy with emotion and from feel, that her eyes were likely red and swollen. “Have you been scrapping, Allen? What have you got to say for yourself?”

“No sir,” Greeleigh interjected quickly, before the hot-tempered Hadley could get a word in. “Allen’s been wondering about her orders, sir, and we suppose she might have mis-heard or misunderstood.”

“Then let Allen speak for herself, cadet--”

“Greeleigh, sir, and beggin’ your pardon, sir, but it’s Ensign Greeleigh, sir, of Mortiferous.”

“That’ll do, _Ensign_ Greeleigh,” Admiral Sanderson said sternly. “Well, Allen?”

“Please, sir, why am I grounded?” If she judged by the feel of her nose and eyes, Helena had no tears left to shed--and yet there was a prickle in her nose and behind her eyes, more tears threatening to fall. “Why am I--why am I assigned to the herdsmen, sir?” A treacherous tear began trickling hot down her clammy cheek. 

“The herdsmen?” Now Admiral Sanderson was frowning not from displeasure, but from genuine confusion. “We don’t assign ensigns to riding the herds, gel. Where did you get such a piece of nonsense?”

“Sir--Simmons said the shepherds, sir--”

“Belay your _hysterics_ , gel,” Sanderson growled, “you’re not being sent to the herdsmen. You’ve been assigned to the _shepherdesses_ , see?”

Helena gulped, trying again to force back her tears and the hot bile of disappointment. “But sir,” she coughed, “sir, I _don’t_ see. If--if being sent t-to the shepherds doesn’t mean--doesn’t mean the herdsmen, what does it mean?”

Sanderson’s scowl lightened fractionally. “Learn to listen, Allen. Shepherdesses ent shepherds, savvy? I forget y’ent been in the Corps a year yet. When we say _shepherdesses_ , we mean the _Xenicas_.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with this chapter.

With a rattling roar Igneuous reared, flexed his claws, and came down head-first, slamming his crested forehead against the tree's trunk with a thump that shook the clearing. Leaves fell in showers and Helena flinched away from the rain of twigs from overhead; a broken stick struck her in the shoulder. The other aviators coughed and cheered: Igneous sneezed, blowing the cloud of dust and splinters away from his new pile of firewood. To Helena's eye, the dragon looked rather pleased with himself. 

The auxiliary clearnings for the dragons and crews that had fought at Shoeburyness extended out more than three miles from the main Dover barracks and offices, and at the outermost edge of these were camped the Xenicas. Helena had never seen a specimen of the breed, even while assisting the surgeons after the battle; indeed, there were many aviators who’d never clapped eyes on one at all, despite years in harness. Many dragon breeds sported antlers or spikes on their heads and necks; the Xenica breed proudly grew great, curving horns, like a ram’s, that curled down to frame their spiked jaws from broad, flat foreheads. Shorter-necked than a Reaper or Longwing, the Xenica were uniformly stout, heavily muscled in the shoulders and chest. Their favorite mode of expression--whether affectionate or aggressive--led from their horns, and while Helena hadn't yet been subject to it, she had seen how the captains would take hold of one of the horns as a forehand came near for a loving head-butt, and ride the gesture off the ground for a little ways. It reminded her, distantly, of one of the doormen she had seen at Wollaton, greeting his toddler granddaughter by sweeping her up into the air. They were, depending on whose opinion was solicited, either heavy lightweights, or light-middleweight, carting crews of no more than ten--and these crews, Helena discovered, must needs be comprised entirely of women. 

The Longwings would take only female handlers, but with that relationship established, would work with men comprising most, if not all, of their remaining crew: Excidium would fly for his first lieutenant and without his Admiral for a time, knowing her safe and her whereabouts, even if he did not have her within sight. A Xenica like Igneous would not: men present at Xenica hatchings could expect to be ignored in the best circumstances, violently mauled by the hatchling at worst. Once paired with their Captains, they would carry female crews and only female crews: surgeons, riflemen, harness-masters and ground crews. The camp held more women in one place than Helena had ever seen yet in her life.

Igneous' Captain, Walton, stepped forward to rub a hand over his forehead crest and brush some stray debris from his scales; he preened a bit under her hand, then began scooping up the splintered trunk in his forehands for transport to the main clearing. The assembled other aviators, Helena included, stepped forward to help: the Xenica camp's assigned contribution to the night's cookfires. The wood was bundled more-or-less neatly atop a pair of tarpaulin; these loaded, the corners were tied together and grasped by a Yellow Reaper each, who leapt aloft and winged back to the mess hall at the center of the camp. 

Their camp was arranged in a wide circle with a circle of fire pits at the center; Xenicas were clannish, like Yellow and Malachite Reapers, and were generally small enough that two of them, plus their crews, could make a comfortable bivouac in a clearing normally intended for a middleweight. Here near Dover there were six Xenica crews and the dragons slept sprawled with easy practice among the tents. Helena was newly-made second ensign aboard Cineracius, the youngest of Captain Mallory's nine-aviatrix crew, and thus far the worst shot aboard--although that, she was certain, would soon change. The Xenica crews practiced relentlessly with pistols and rifles, laboring under the expectation that each aviatrix serve as rifleman and sharpshooter, maximizing the small crew's effectiveness on the battlefield. Helena was getting better, even after only four days under Captain Mallory's tutelage; still, she despaired to see the the first ensign, Davids, hit ten out of ten targets dead-center with both a pistol and a rifle. The older girl barely blinked at the report of her guns, coolly handing each off for reloading between shots, her eyes never leaving the target. 

The Reapers returned an hour later, a steaming pot held between them on a long pole they grasped with their foreclaws: dinner for the camp, dragons and aviators alike. As Helena and the other second-ensigns were gathering the camp's bowls and dishes for washing at the meal's conclusion, another dragon winged into their camp, alighting just past the bordering line of stumps; looking up, Helena recognized the grey-and-blue Turkish feral whom she'd seen in Animosia's clearing the week prior--Gherni, she thought, or something similar. Cineracius, closest to the edge, brandished his curling horns at her, a perfunctory little challenge, but greeted her in whistling Durzaugh; Captain Mallory drained her coffee cup and strode to the edge of the clearing to join the conference with the little unharnessed beast. 

Helena and the other five ensigns hastily finished scrubbing the dishes and stacked them on a log to dry by the fire, somewhat haphazardly with their washrags slung over the rims, and were the last to join the general conference of officers and aviators who gathered to hear Captain Mallory's conveyance of the news. 

Jacqueline Mallory was a striking woman of middling height, although the force of her presence had given Helena the impression, upon their first meeting, that the Captain was much taller. Had she been a gentlewoman of society she would have been labeled an exotic beauty, with sharp, hooded eyes and great curling masses of dark hair. Mother doubtlessly would have whispered that her nose and lips bespoke a Turkish or Jewish bloodline, but in Helena's lately-altered view that mattered little: Captain Mallory wore her hair plaited tightly down and her coat, breeches and neck-cloth as neat as any other serving-officer of Helena's experience, her captain's bars and medals of service subtle, understated accents to the bright light of her presence. Prior to meeting her new captain, if asked, Helena might have said that Captain St Germaine was the most beautiful of the female captains, and Admiral Roland the most martial; Captain Mallory, however, seemed Boudicca reborn. As late as she had come to the Corps, even Helena knew that she would have to accustom herself to the Captain's presence soon, or risk washing out from her post: target-practice under the Captain's eye the last two days had been exhilarating and nerve-wracking and exhausting. 

"Gentlemen," the Captain was saying (a mode of address the Xenica captains used without irony or sarcasm), "I am certain official orders will come in the morning, but the current scuttlebutt says that we are for Iberia and the continent the day after tomorrow. We will be in company with at least two full Longwing formations across the Channel, and thence through the coastal cities and down to Portugal and Spain. We were right in our speculation: Wellington and Roland mean to liberate Spain, Italy, and Portugal, and pinch old Boney from the south."

"Any word on how we're going, Jack?" Asked Captain Walton, leaning in. "If we're crossing from anywhere south of here it's at least a week aboard transport for the all of us."

There was a round of grumbling that passed among the dragons and the aviatrices both, and Captain Mallory held up a hand to quiet them. 

"Roland knows the difficulties with moving us like that, and we're not going down there to fight in the vanguard, are we? No, there might be some time on a boat, but I don't think we'll be sailing all the way to Gibraltar. Let the Longwings kick in the front door, we'll be going around the back!"

There was a general laugh at that, although Helena was left no less mystified-- _another thing to catch up on_ , she mused dismally. 

"If that's what to expect, gents," called Captain Hughes over the swell, "then I would advise all crews to see themselves fit to travel in the morning. My harness crew will be packing up kit tonight and stowing the forge; I suggest the rest of you do the same. We've got to keep the eye on our reputation, lads!"

A smart "aye, Captain!" echoed around the clearing, not just from Hughes' crew: as small as each crew was, and as clannish as the dragons tended to be, there seemed to be less of a chain of command for the Xenica crews, and more of a general hierarchy. Helena had been relieved to discover it: when all of the Captains more-or-less shared command of the group, Captain Mallory's presence seemed a little less overbearing. 

The crews did break to attend their separate dragons; there were six Xenicas in service in Britain at present, although Helena had learned of two more that were assigned to Halifax and Canada: the tone if that intelligence suggested the posting was punitive in nature, although she hadn't yet been able to learn why the two Captains and their crews and their dragons had been packed off so. Besides Walton and Igneous, and Mallory and Cineracius, there was Captain Freedman and Repleantur; Captain Torres and Fraxius, and Captains Alphons and Baryon, whose dragons Atritus and Adustus had hatched from twin eggs--although the dragons themselves differed in every way the beasts could, within the identifying boundaries of a common breed. 

Just as Captain Mallory seemed to Helena to embody every exemplary trait of a classical heroine, so too did Cineracius shine a little brighter than the other Xenicas in her eyes: he was, after all, _her_ dragon (or as good as, the little voice in her mind would argue hotly). He was a few hands taller at the shoulder, a few feet longer in the tail; his great horns curled in what must be mathematically-perfect curves out from his broad, crested forehead. They'd had aerial maneuvering drills twice since Helena's arrival, and Cineracius' speed and agility were breathtaking, each sweep and snap of his wings measured and powerful. Helena even fancied that the swirling patterns of ashen-grey, ochre, and rust-brown on his hide were more symmetrical than on the other dragons', and his gold eyes shone brighter than his fellows'. She could admire Temeraire's exotic elegance, Animosia's easygoing experience, and Mortiferous' deadly confidence, but after her scant four days on Cineracius' crew, he was simply more splendid than any other dragon of her acquaintance. 

To add to her wonder, Cineracius seemed to genuinely _like_ his newest ensign. He had yet to chide her for a slip up or hesitation, and had solemnly thanked her in his grave, gravelly voice for her help in repairing a stretched-out flank strap on his harness the morning prior. And best as yet:

"Allen," the dragon rumbled as she slung the last of the spare leather into his carry-sacks (Xenicas did not carry belly-netting as larger breeds did; instead, the crew latched on in two rows to either side of the spine, with baggage and supplies distributed in rolled sacks across the withers and hips), "I would like to hear you read to us again tonight, if you please. I think I am remembering more of my French as you read it, and I daresay we will need to know more, soon."

Davids, who was helping store the harness supplies, grinned and poked Helena in the shoulder. "That's you served, Allen. Thus ever for those who can jaw with the Frogs: you're the camp's bedtime-storyteller, now."

Helena ducked her head, glad of the for evening light that wouldn't show her blush. "It's not hard to learn, Davids. I'm sure if you practiced your French half as much as you polish your pistols, your accent would sound less like an actual frog croaking!"

"Bold words, ensign!" Davids laughed, and Cineracius chuckled. "You'll change your tune when we're in Portugal and you can't make out a blessed thing the locals are saying--keep all your _vous vous voi vois vois_!"

Helena let herself giggle. "As you wish, Davids. I will let you talk our way through to Cadiz and Lisbon!"

Davids said something rapid in what seemed to Helena to be fluent Portugese, or possibly Spanish--her experience with French did not, to Helena's dismay, _translate_ to the more staccato Iberian languages. 

Cineracius snorted: an easily-understood dragon chuckle. " _Audax verba tua, quoniam vir puellam quae coaxant ranae tamquam_ ," he mused, and both girls laughed at his fluent Latin--a shared schoolroom tongue. 

With the baggage stowed and the crews packed in anticipation of the coming morning's orders, the aviatrices were generally at liberty, save for turns at watch: a light duty in a camp shared by sixty women and six dragons. Helena and another ensign, Matthews from Fraxius' crew, walked their 2 hours' patrol as the last of the sunset bled from the sky, then Helena returned to her bedroll in the small tent she shared with Davids. As he'd done the night before, Cineracius settled himself around his captain's tent, hindquarters curled protectively around three of the sides, which placed his head near the entrance to Helena and Davids' own structure. Helena wiggled in her bedroll until her own head and shoulders were outside, then opened the book from which she'd read to the dragon the night before. Thus ensconced, she read from the book of French folktales until Davids returned from her own round of patrol and the fire had burned low enough to make the pages illegible. 

As predicted, their formal orders arrived with the morning: a mustering out to Plymouth, and thence across the Channel on a short transport; from there, the Xenica formation--insofar as they could be called thus--would make their way down the French coast and rendezvous with three Longwing formations--Mortiferous, Lily, and the Admiral and Excidium--at Bilbao. From there, the British aerial divisions would join with the Spanish and Portugese loyalists to fight across French-occupied Spain to Cadiz and begin the assault northwards. 

"Eat up, my darling; did you want to go hunt for something fresh this morning?" Helena heard Captain Mallory say to Cineracius. The dragon rumbled affectionately and nudged her with his nose. 

"A fresh goat would do nicely before we are in the air; what is the time, and how long have I got?"

"We are not expected before eleven at the main hall; the other formations are leaving first," the Captain replied, adding, "as per usual."

"So the men don't get underfoot," the dragon agreed blithely, then growled a little. "You smell of man this morning. Where did you go last night?" 

Helena could well imagine Cineracius as the strict chaperone. 

"Never you mind, you old gossip. Mind on the mission, my lamb." The Captain glanced over and caught Helena's eye, although the ensign looked away quickly and tried to busy herself with the pack she'd already finished strapping shut.

"Allen! Just the ensign I wanted to see. Go round the tents, will you, and collect the post before we're off." The Captain's voice was a little loud and Helena blushed, feeling as though she'd been privy to part of the conversation between captain and dragon that was not meant for other ears. "And you'll want to pull your hair back, Allen, and not plait it; we'll be for St Mary's Bay and a transport first, and we must kit you out like a lad while we're on the ship and most-a-ways after we land."

This last was said with the air of casual reminder, but left Helena baffled. "Beg pardon, Captain, and I do not mean in the least to question my orders, but--do you mean dress as a boy? That is--I mean, _more_ like a boy?"

Captain Mallory eyed her curiously. "Onboard ship, yes, you and the other ensigns will dress as boys. Same will go for the Longwing ensigns if there are any girls among the formations. And there will be times when we are along the coast that you must kit up like boys, or like country lasses, or milkmaids if needs must." Under her captain's sharpening gaze, Helena felt her flush deepen. The Captain continued, "Well, nip by the quartermaster if you need aught by way of a cap or jacket. But go 'round and collect letters first. I trust you've writ home?"

"Not--not lately, Captain. Ought I write?"

"On the eve of leaving for the continent? I daresay you better had! We'll be a six-month and more in Iberia, Allen, and won't have the luxury of couriers. Have you even writ home to say you survived Shoeburyness?"

"I thought, they read the _Gazette_ , Captain--"

Captain Mallory pointed sternly towards Helena's tent. "A letter home, Ensign, and then go run down the post."

Correspondence was a cornerstone of British society, and as such Helena had been schooled and practiced in letter-writing since she could first scrawl her name. She had, for her age, a fair number of correspondence partners: girls her own age whose families spent the social season next-door or across Grosvenor Square from the Laurence town-home; her grandmother, when the family was away from Wollaton; even her Uncle Will, once upon a very long time ago, after he’d first been shifted to the Corps. A dutiful daughter would have left a note, and then written home as soon as she’d arrived safe at Loch Laggan, and continued the stream of letters--even if they were one-sided--weekly, as duty permitted. Helena stared down at the blank page before her, twin fires of shame and embarrassment alight in her cheeks as she rolled the pen between her fingers: for she could think of nothing to say. 

In the end, her letter was only a few scant lines; not to her father, as she really ought to have addressed it, nor to her Grandfather, either, as the pater familias; instead, cowardly though it could be called, she addressed the letter to her mother: 

_I Beg You Not Repine upon my condition, Mama; I have Come Through the Great Battle at Shoeburyness with nary a scratch, and have been Made Ensign for it, a Fast Promotion and Well-Earned, my Colleagues say. Now I am Assigned to Captain Mallory and Cineracius, and we are For the Continent. I will Write when I am Able. Please give my Love to Father, and the Boys, and Grandmother and Grandfather--  
Your Dutiful Daughter,   
Helena._

Folded, sealed and addressed, Helena shuffled the letter in and amongst those of the rest of the camp’s, wary of the letter’s direction giving her away. She was not quite sure why she persisted in pretending to be Helena Allen, and not Laurence: the name was not very far out of the common way, and her uncle now was bound for Australia, where the camp gossip assured one, with a sigh, that neither hide nor hair of him should be seen again, more’s the pity, traitor or no. For as inexpressibly valuable as Temeraire was said to be, there was a collective easing of tension at the news that he would be sent across the world: let him stir trouble in his native China, then, and for all the terrible power of his divine wind, the dragons of the Corps would be manageable again with his absence. 

The post delivered to headquarters, Helena did stop off at the quartermaster’s tent, and upon revealing that she was of Mallory’s crew, was bundled off with a whole duffle of supply: caps and scarves, petticoats and woolens, tall boots and slippers alike. The wild variation in the clothes puzzled her: inasmuch as anything, it reminded her of her brothers’ play-costume trunk, which Nurse and Nanny had stocked with pirate hats, mocked-up uniform coats, and mysterious cloaks in a myriad of garish colors. Her brothers would ransack the chest twice and thrice a week, making up games of King Arthur and pirates of the Caribbean shipping-lanes, chasing down slaver ships and fighting dragons--for nearly every costume was completed with the addition of scarred and chipped wooden swords, no matter the actual game. She was still wondering when she staggered back into the clearing under the weight of the duffle, whereupon she was relieved of it by Davids and Franks--who said almost nothing, only taking it from her and carrying it between them to the centre of the clearing, near the fire. 

“But--but hold on. Davids! Hold on, please!” Helena jogged herself out of her winded bafflement and skipped a few steps to catch up with the other ensigns. “Why did they send a duffle full of clothes? Are we going...are we for _Siberia_? Or Norway?” --these being the coldest regions that came immediately to mind; and no other reason for the excessive outfitting could be had. Davids and Franks shared a look between themselves and halted, setting down the duffle. 

“Allen, has anyone told you why we’re for the Continent?” Davids asked, not unkindly, but with a frank curiosity.

“Orders, ent it?” Helena puffed. “There’s fighting in the Med, and Spain and Portugal; I suppose...I suppose they’re trying to throw off Bonaparte too, now we’ve done it, and asked for our help.”

“But you’re not wondering why the Xenicas are ordered there first? And not some of the heavyweight formations?”

“I thought we were off in company with the Admiral, and her formation.”

Franks shook her head. “We go in first. We’re...well, do you know the term ‘irregulars’?” 

Helena felt a chill dance up her spine, briefly: she’d heard the word, of course, especially when talk had come round to what Laurence and Temeraire and their formation had been doing during the invasion. Tales of the French irregulars had ascribed any number of wild attributes to the invaders: that they were no better than common thieves, murderers and rapists, that they’d put villages to sword and torch in their searches for food and supplies for the French army--or that they were easy prey, unaware of their surroundings and carrying plenty of supply and useful treasure around England (to hear the dragons’ perspective, which she had, during her time with the surgeons). 

“And...and that’s what we are?” Helena asked. She did not know what to feel about the revelation. Certainly she had never ascribed to herself the qualities--or lack of qualities-- that might turn one to rape, or murder, or pillage, and she had never heard of such training in any of the military branches, although she _had_ heard plenty of gossip surrounding the Corps itself, before she’d joined up. Then again...surely her crew would not be expected to behave the same way that the _French_ irregulars were, to have those very same crimes laid at their feet. Would there be French patrols hunting them, as Temeraire and her uncle had? 

“Rather like,” Franks replied, and Helena’s stomach sank. “We’re going in as advanced scouts and reconnaissance. We’ll likely be in the country and searching out weak spots in Boney’s occupation, then support the Admiral and Wellington when they get there, to liberate Spain and come up through France.”

“Have you done this before?”

“Yes,” said Davids, the older, at the same time that Franks said, “No,” and then continued, “but Igneous told me this morning, and he’s done it a fair few times.” She smiled a little. 

The Xenicas mustered at the main clearing in the covert at half-past ten, their crews and baggage already boarded and stowed, their Captains each standing at her dragon’s head, awaiting orders. Excidium landed not a quarter of an hour later, short of crew: just the Admiral, her quartet of lieutenants, and, descending stiffly from dragonback, Admiral Lord Wellington. 

Only Admiral Roland approached the assembled formation. “Captains,” she greeted them, handing out six packets of stamped and sealed orders, “the next time I will see you all assembled shall be at Cadiz. I expect to see each and every one of you and your crews at the rendezvous. There is a hard and dangerous course ahead of you, but of course I would not dare send you to any other kind.” There was a general chuckle amongst the Captains and the senior officers; Helena swallowed, trying her best not to tremble, afraid her harness-rings might jingle and chime and give her away. 

“I have every confidence in your success,” Admiral Roland concluded, and in ragged unison each of the aviatrices assembled snapped a salute to their admiral. She returned it smartly, and kept her place before them as each of the Captains mounted up and secured herself in harness. 

“All lies well,” Cineracius rumbled as Captain Mallory clipped her carabiners securely in place; the dragons had each tested their harness in the camp clearing as they were loaded and boarded by their crews, but the phrase was an ingrained formality for every dragon and their crew; it felt almost bad luck to go aloft without it. And then Cineracius was gathering himself, leaping into the air, sweeping his wings forward to cup the wind and send it back behind them with a sound like the roar of thunder, or guns, or the sea. 

St Mary’s Bay was two hours’ flight along the coast, south from Dover. Cineracius landed nearly in tandem with Adustus and Igneous, with the other three coming in neatly close behind; a smooth and pleasant flight, nothing like that hunted, sneaking trip from Edinburgh to Nottinghamshire that Helena had taken with the Admiral and Captain Hollin and Elsie so many weeks ago. 

Larger dragons with larger crews would use flights like this one to practice maneuvers from the dragon’s upper harness to the lower, Helena knew; she had had them described to her in one of Uncle Will’s letters, when she was still allowed to write to him. Cineracius and the other Xenicas carried only ten aviators apiece, with no lower positions; the Captain sat forward, with one ensign to her right; her first lieutenant sat furthest to the rear, with another ensign at her side. The others, midwing and riflemen all, sat in two groups of three, one to either side of the main harness-strap. Helena had been stationed with Lieutenant Hartford in the lookout’s position at the base of the tail. Hartford was a tall woman of perhaps five-and-thirty, no older than Helena’s mother, as good a shot as the Captain, with a voice like a twelve-pound gun: deep and rough and loud enough to bring back the mosquito-like whine that might still plague Helena between her ears. Instead of changing positions from the back to the belly, Hartford took them through maneuvers all along Cineraceous’ back, checking the balance of cargo and the aviatrices themselves, making sure that any one of the crew could get to any place on the dragon she might be needed, in case of injury or enemy boarding. Helena had received a gruff, “Good speed there, Allen,” at the end of the final maneuver, for which she still felt a glow in her cheeks: the first praise she’d heard that sounded like it could have been given to anyone in the crew, and not just for demonstrating that she was still catching up to the others, born to the life a-dragonback and with years and years of experience she did not possess. 

Landing at St Mary’s, Hartford had taken Helena and Davids aside, checking their uniforms and particularly their hair. Satisfied at least with that, she’d rubbed a little more dust into their faces where their flying-goggles had prevented it from sticking, despite Helena’s reluctance to submit to such ministration; Hartford scowled at her. “Allen,” she’d growled sternly, “hold still. Ye’ll ne’er pass as a boy onboard if yer allus so clean.”

“But why must I be a boy?” Helena demanded, doing her best to remain polite to a senior officer while at the same time, trying to worm away from the grime-bearing glove. 

Hartford straightened up, frowning, and Davids turned to look at her, astonished. Helena felt the color rise in her cheeks for such a silly question. Aboard ship there could be no indication that any of them were women, at all--not if they wanted to make it to Le Havre in any kind of stealth. 

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” she muttered, trying to pitch her voice deeper and sound like a boy. Hartford cocked one eyebrow and brought the dusty glove to bear on the side of Helena’s nose. 

“Don’t do that to yer voice, Allen; you’ll give the game away soon’s as you open your mouth.”

They would be aboard a transport for two days, until the ship reached the mid-point between England and France; there, to avoid French shipping and patrols, the dragons would take flight for Le Havre, a distance of only seventy miles but nearly all of that over the open ocean. 

The transport seemed bigger than Grosvenor Park, even with dragon bodies crowding the sweeping fan-shaped dragon deck; the rest of the deck seemed to stretch away to the horizon and the sailors at the far stern looked as small as tin soldiers. Britain had half a dozen or more such ships, and in the wake of the French retreat from England every dragon transport had been pressed into service. Theirs was the _Katherine of Aragon_ , and upon their departure she would return to Liverpool to take the place of the _Allegiance_ ; that ship, previously intended for a journey to the isolate breeding grounds at Halifax, was now being supplied and fitted to transport a thousand criminals to Australia...along with one disgraced Celestial dragon and his proud, traitorous captain.

There was little idle time for Helena to contemplate her Uncle's sentence. While she was very glad Uncle Will wasn't going to hang, and certainly he and Temeraire would be content in New South Wales at the new covert, she did wish she had been able to see him, or be seen, before their respective transports weighed anchor. To be acknowledged as a member of a fighting dragon's crew, and as herself, not just as Ensign Allen but as Will Laurence's niece Helena, who had been brave enough to run away and join up in Britain's darkest hour...that might have been something, at least. 

These thoughts rolled about in her head as she and Davids repacked baggage, loaded pistol cartridges, and stitched secret pockets into hemlines of cloaks and shirts and trousers; the lieutenants examined these and filled them with single coins, paper twists of salt, dried fruit, false documents, maps and folding spyglass, like opera-glasses. From a general supply every aviatrix was given knives for her boots and belt; the senior officers would carry their swords, and every woman had a pistol, at the least.

On the third morning, the crews began to disperse, the dragons leaving the transport in a staggered order and heading for disparate landings, so that they would not draw attention as a group. Leaving Dover, the aviatrixes had been in the breeches, boots, and bottle-green coats of Aerial Corps officers; now, leaving the transport, each dragon carried ten riders of indiscriminate gender and age, with no markers of rank or standing to be seen among the rough coats and travel-stained packs they each bore. Cineracius leapt aloft from the dragon-deck, striking out across the open ocean at a steady pace, the miles of glittering water falling away beneath him; the wind in their faces was brisk and chill, and ahead lay the coast of France: enemy territory and the beating heart of this long and terrible war.


End file.
